* E A U T O B I O G R A P H Y O I7

US KINSKI
\ \ s I \ t i; d u v j n \ (n i m n i: i c k o s ( ii r I
KINSKI
■DT
Also by Klaus Kinski

Kinski Paganini
T he A u t o b i o g r a p h y of K l a u s K i n s k i

T ranslated from G erman by

J oachim N eugröschel

VIKING
S.S.F. PUBLIC LIBRARY
WEST ORANGE AVENUE
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

This edidon first published in 1996 by

Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © Klaus Kinski and Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH, 1991

Translation copyright ©Joachim Neugröschel, 1996
All rights reserved

Previously published in German as Kinski: Ich Brauche Liehe

by Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1991.

Photographs courtesy o f the Estate of Klaus Kinski unless otherwise indicated.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Kinski, Klaus.
[Ich brauche Liebe. English]
Kinski u n cu t: the autobiography of Klaus Kinski / translated from German by
Joachim Neugröschel.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-670-86744-6
1. Kinski, Klaus. 2. Actors—Germany—Biography. I. Tide.
PN2658.K52A3 1996
7 9 1 .4 3 ^ 2 8 ^ 9 2 -dc20
[B] 96-4921

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

©
Printed in the United States of America
Set in Bulmer
Designed byjunie Lee

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise), without the prior written permission o f both the copyright owner and the
above publisher of this book.
 We are cripples, we artists. Our art is nothing,
because our tools are too dull to get at the
essence and express it. Christ alone has that
ability. He affects us directly without writing,
without painting; at every moment he transforms
his entire life into an artwork.
— Vincent van Gogh
For my son, Nanhoi, whom I love more than anything in the world.
“Wanted: Jesus Christ. Occupation: worker. Address: unknown. He has
no religion. He belongs to no party. He is never seen at public assem­
blies. He is accused of larceny, contributing to the delinquency of mi­
nors, blasphemy, desecrating churches, insulting authority, flouting
laws, consorting with whores and criminals—”
Now some jerk in the audience heckles me. I can’t see him. I ’m
blinded by powerful spotlights, all focusing on me. The auditorium of
Berlin’s Deutschlandhalle (capacity: about twenty thousand people) is
a pitch-black wall.
Why is that idiot harassing me? I ’m wired. I ’ve been on my feet fo r
over seventy hours, I haven’t slept a wink fo r several nights. Endless TV
and radio interviews, newspapers. Plus I ’ve eaten nothing and smoked
at least eighty cigarettes since yesterday morning. And now I ’m stand­
ing on this high scaffold as i f it were a gallows.
“Come up here i f you’ve got something to say, ”I shout into the dark­
ness. “Otherwise stay on your butt and keep your trap shut!”
What does he want? Is he trying to sound important? The only im­
portant thing now is what I have to recite. I ’ve come here to tell the most
exciting story in the history of mankind: the life of Jesus Christ.
I ’m not talking about the Jesus in those horribly gaudy pictures.
Not the Jesus with the jaundice-yellow skin—whom a crazy human soci­
ety has turned into the biggest whore of all time. Whose corpse they per­
versely drag around on disgraceful crosses. I don’t mean the jabbering
about God or the blubbering hymns. I don’t mean the Jesus whose moldy
kiss frightens little girls out of horny dreams before their First Commu­
nion and then makes them die of shame and disgust when they foam in
the latrines.
2 K laus K inski

I ’m talking about the man: the restless man who says we have to
turn over a new leaf all the time, now! Pm talking about the
adventurer, the freest, most fearless, most modern of all men, the one
who preferred being massacred to rotting with others. Pm talking about
the man who is like what all of us want to be. You and I.
Meanwhile, the shithead who interrupted me has arrived on the
scaffold. I hand him the mike because I haven’t the foggiest clue what
he’s after.
“Christ was a saint, ” the bastard howls, “he never consorted with
whores and criminals. . . . He wasn’t as violent as Kinski. . . . ”
What do you call “violent,”you blabbermouth? Yeah, Pve got vio­
lence in me, but no negative violence. My violence is the violence of thefree
man who refuses to knuckle under. Creation is violent. Life is violent.
Birth is a violent process. Tempests and earthquakes are violent move­
ments of nature. My violence is the violence of life. It is not violence
against nature, like the violence of the state, which sends your kids to the
slaughterhouse, deadens your minds, and drives out your souls!
I grab the mike from that moron’s hand because he refuses to give it
back to me. The bouncers take care of the rest. When he tries to fight
them, they simply throw him down the stairs. Other brawlers, who have
only come to raise a rumpus, join in. When the first punches start
smashing away, a huge police contingent fans out to prevent a free-for-
all. The cops whack away with clubs in their hands and protective hel­
mets on theirfaces.
Oh well, I think, it’s just like two thousand years ago.
I hurl out the mike and the tripod, which is attached to a long
cable hanging from the ceiling, from the scaffold. Then I go backstage
and wait to see what happens, while the tripod zooms back and forth
like an empty trapeze over the heads of the spectators.
Flash bulbs flashing all over the place. Movie cameras whirring.
Reporters asking idiotic questions. I t’s all turning my stomach. I yell at
 Kinski Uncut 3

the vultures who circle me nonstop—I can’t get rid of them, they sneak
behind me even when I take a piss.
Spectators come dashing backstage, hugging and kissing me.
People who’ve seen me at thousands of performances when I tore my heart
from my body and held it out to them. Minhoi clings to my neck and cries.
She’s scared and worried about me; she’s never seen me on stage. People beg
me to get back on the scaffold. Yes! The show’ll go on. But only when these
rowdies stop smashing faces and, above all, keep their traps shut! This
riffraff is even more fucked up than the Pharisees. At least they let Jesus
finish talking before they nailed him to the cross.
The spectators are still out in force; none of them wants to go home.
They’re all waiting for me to come back.
Midnight. The place slowly calms down. No one coughs. No one
clears his throat. Now there’s total silence.
A lot of spectators have left their back rows and are thronging
the empty space in front of the scaffold. Camping on the floor. I t’s
Woodstock.
I jum p down from the scaffold and join them. My exhaustion has
vanished. I no longerfeel my body. I see them very clearly in front of me:
their faces; the finest reaction in each individual face. Thousands of
eyes gazing at me. Yearning eyes, ablaze with passion. I go from one
spectator to the next. Stand in front of them. Sit down with them. Hug
them. Girls and boys, women and men of all ages.

I once asked a Gypsy girlfriend whether she ever went to the theater or
the movies, and she replied: “When I wasfourteen, two men fought with
knives over me. One stabbed the other to death. I touched the dead man;
he was really dead. The other was really alive. ”
That’s the difference between make-believe life and real life. Mine is
real.
“Don’t move,” says my father, bowing to me.
I usually don’t obey him. But he begs so urgently that I halt out of
curiosity.
What’s he up to? Why shouldn’t I go in with him? Does he even
have the money to enter a place like that? I don’t have time to verbal­
ize my thoughts. My father has already stepped inside the crowded
boutique.
I don’t move. I only shift occasionally from one leg to the other
because my feet are burning in my tight shoes.
I’ve often wondered why my father bows to small children. This
is what I think: My father, who claims he used to be an opera singer,
got into the habit of bowing when he was doing a guest performance
in Japan. Once I watched my father at a mirror. He didn’t realize he
was being watched. He was making faces, breathtaking grimaces with
the hypnotic power of Kabuki masks. He gestured and yanked open
his mouth as if he were about to sing. His chest rose and sank in­
tensely; even the vein in his neck swelled. But, weirdly enough, not a
sound emerged from his throat.
“There you are!” I thought. “You saw for yourself that he can’t
sing!”
I believe that his story is a hoax. None of us has ever heard my fa­
rther sing. In any case, my father is a pharmacist and not an opera
singer.
Nobody knows where my father comes from or what he’s done.
Gossip has it that he had no parents. Maybe that’s why he bows to lit­
tle children. That’s all we know. He never confides in anyone.
We street kids call my father “Baldie,” “Turnip,” “Bulli,” or sim-
 Kinski Uncut 5

ply “Bulb.” And his bald pate really does shine like a light bulb. He’s
nicknamed Turnip because when he shaves his head, it sounds as if
he were scraping a turnip. He really shouldn’t be using the rusty ra­
zor, which is covered with nicks like an old weeder. Even my mother,
who’s normally quite deft, has hacked out whole pieces of his skin.
Only very seldom does he go to a real barber. The barber applies
his perilously sharp blade like a Jewish slaughterer, and he has never
injured my father. My mother spied on him. She pressed her face up
against the barbershop window and breathlessly watched the slaugh­
terer nimbly pirouetting around my father’s baldness. When the shav­
ing was done, my father deliberately and snottily flung sixty cents on
the table even though the shave cost only fifty.
My father always tries to look chic in order to camouflage his
poverty. It’s not so easy, for his so-called wardrobe, which consists
exclusively of whatever he’s wearing, can peel off him at any moment,
the way rotten flesh peels off a leper. I believe that’s why he moves so
gingerly, never leans on anything, never crooks his knees or elbows,
never bends down, never sits, always stands. In short, his movements
are spare because he doesn’t want to put a strain on his clothes. I sus­
pect that he never dares to take a deep breath except when he’s naked.
The worn, greasy ass of his trousers, the puffed-out knees and el­
bows are so threadbare that you can see his skin shimmering through
the weave.
His shoes, as glossy as mirrors, are so brittle that they could disin­
tegrate any moment now. He constantly seems to guard against bump­
ing into anything. I feel as if he floats rather than walks. He barely
grazes the ground. He probably moves like that chiefly because of his
shoe soles, which are detached from the leather uppers all the way to
the trouser strap. Normally, with each forward step of a foot, such a
sole would clap shut like a crocodile’s maw and then bang loudly on
the ground. But my father has devised a method to prevent anyone
6 K laus Kinski

from discovering the catastrophic state of his shoes. He doesn’t bend

his knees while walking; instead, he lifts his entire leg directly from the
hip as if it were on a rubber band, gently raising it from the ground
and forward; by this means the shoe sole snuggles against the upper
leather. Then he places his foot back on the ground, as smoothly as a
yo-yo.
But everyone first gapes at my father’s monocle anyway. It’s not
really a monocle, it’s a loose, cloudy eyeglass lens. However, my fa­
ther has the nerve to wedge this shard into his left socket. This eye
can’t see without the monocle. His right eye is totally blind. In any
case, because of the mock-up monocle his hair-raising clothes are out
of danger, and no one makes fun of them.
It’s been ages since he went inside the boutique. I look all around
for a place to take a leak. I’m slowly losing patience.
He’s nicknamed Bulli not only because of his thick dick and his
big balls. “Bulli” is also short for “bulldog.” Not because he’s bald
(English bulldogs always look bald), but because of his entire face.
Everything on it droops as if he had too much skin. On his neck and
forehead, the creases, which are as deep as scars, end abruptly at his
bald head.
I once heard him say, “The jaws of bulldogs and sharks can’t be
pried apart once their double rows of teeth sink into something.
That’s why those animals are so dangerous.”
While I don’t believe that my father would try to bite anyone, I
did hope for a while that people would be scared of him. Not only be­
cause of his bulldog face. His muscles are unusually strong, and he’s
as broad as an athlete.
But I was mistaken. A stranger can’t see my father’s muscles, and
so he cynically thinks, Jerk. Or, Baldie. When dressed my father looks
slender. His bulldog face makes no impact; people just poke fun at it. I
had to learn that bulldogs are considered freaks by amateurs, which is
 Kinski Uncut 7

what most people are. They are said to be totally harmless, and they
are so rare in Germany that they tend to be unknown. In fact, I once
heard a little boy say to his mother when a bulldog waddled by,
“Look, Mom, a pig.”
So I know my father is regarded at best as a harmless pig. That
pains me. F o ri love my father, and I wish other people were scared of
him. If you’re poor your only weapon is to instill fear.
I’m so dizzy from strenuous thinking and from hunger that I’m in
something like a state of intoxication. . . . Suddenly my father comes
scooting out of the boutique and I hear a voice shrieking, “Stop, thief!
Bang him on his bald head! Grab him, hold him!”
It’s the shopkeeper, who’s stumbling over me and yanking me
around so that I crash into the fruit stands outside his store. The ap­
ples zoom in all directions. I quickly gather some into my apron and
get the hell out of there without knowing where to turn.
Panting, weighed down by the apples in my apron, cursing our
poverty, the robbing, the store owner, and my father, who started this
goddamn mess in the first place.
I bang one fist into my spleen, while the other fist clutches the
apron with the apples, which keep swinging into my legs, interfering
with my running.
The slamming of my soles on the hard asphalt echoes in my skull
like a carpet beater. My huffing and puffing stab into my lungs like a
knife. The world goes black before my eyes . . . and I notice that I’m
pissing in my pants. Too late to open my fly. I feel the hot liquid
streaming down the insides of my thighs. I didn’t want to embarrass
my father by pissing against a building wall.
“Where the hell is he?”
Swearing like a trooper I kick away all the stones in my path. Even
though my mother warned me not to do that because this is my only
pair of shoes.
8 K laus K inski

All at once a gigantic hand grabs my collar and pulls me into a

building entrance. Whirling around, I see it’s my father. Thick drops
of sweat cover his baldness.
“Papa, what’s wrong?”
Instead of replying, he sobs like a little boy and hugs me so vio­
lently that he squeezes all the air out of me. He squashes a bar of
chocolate in his cramped fist.
Aside from the mayhem he triggered, is chocolate all he bagged?
And only one bar? And for that one bar he made me spend over an
hour standing in the street in tight shoes and with a full bladder? I
start frisking him so far as I can while I’m caught in his paws. Nothing!
He’s really got nothing else! And why is he crying? My eyes are glued
to the chocolate; I’m worried he’s gonna wreck it totally.
“Why are you crying, Papa?”
I try to wriggle out of his sweat box. He’s so absorbed in his emo­
tions that he doesn’t realize he’s almost choking me. He tries to say
something but his voice dissolves into further sobs.
Is he embarrassed because his little expedition was a wild goose
chase? Is he still terrified through and through? That’s no reason to
cry. And what if it’s not the reason? What if he’s ashamed that he stole
something, and decides to blab first chance he gets? Shit! He’ll just
put everyone in danger if he can’t get hold of himself.
My father never has money because he doesn’t have a job. Even
though he’s been wearing his heels flat looking for work, it never pans
out. Either no one wants him or else he gets kicked out within four
weeks. I don’t know why, but it always turns into a fight.
Is that why you sacrificed the best years of your youth, burning
the midnight oil cramming Greek and Latin? To become a common
laborer, to steal a bar of chocolate when you’re sixty, to run away from
some clown, and to cry because you’re ashamed? What are you sur­
prised at? Isn’t it quite in order that each pharmacy owner can toss
 Kinski Uncut 9

you out on your ear if he feels like it? “What nerve!” you say. “Knowl­
edge is worth more than money,” you claim. Don’t make me laugh!
You’re a laborer. You can never even dream of comparing yourself to
a pharmacy owner! You’d have to toil for years, for decades—for cen­
turies—to pay for your own drugstore, unless you robbed a bank! No,
no! You’re gonna remain a laborer. A well-educated man, but a la­
borer all the same. In any event, you’re unimportant; otherwise they’d
give you a job.
I feel a desire to do something for him, help him, protect him. I
yank insanely on the fists that he bores into his eyes.
“Please stop crying, Papa. Papa! Dear Papa!”
One thing is certain: We can never allow him to go shoplifting
again. And definitely not by himself. And besides, I can’t take all that
waiting in front of the store and then that running.
He clings to me so beseechingly, as if he were begging, “Let me
try it just one more time.”
I know—it’s not easy to stop stealing once you’ve tasted blood.
But goddammit, you shouldn’t let it get out of hand. He has to see
that he’s not much of a shoplifter. He’s simply not tough enough.
And his face and bald head make him stand out. He’s just not
the type.

This is an especially awful day. We haven’t eaten in forty-eight

hours.
A week ago I was groping through the pitch-black hallway and I
bumped into one of those repulsive pieces of furniture with which the
landlord has blocked up the entire house. They all look like enameled
coffins. I hurt my ankle, which has swollen badly. It’s put an end to
my thieving. The tiny emergency reserve of money was used up days
ago, and I feel so sick that I have to sit on the stoop for a long time
IO K laus Kinski

until I feel strong enough to limp to my grocery store. Today I’m go­
ing to get there no matter what, even if I have to crawl on all fours. My
mother sits down next to me.
“Don’t you have sharp pains?”
“It’s all right.”
“My poor dear has to put up with so much now.”
“I’m no sissy!”
“Sorry. At least come inside.”
“I don’t wanna.”
“You shouldn’t go outdoors with your bad ankle. Besides, this
just isn’t the right place for my little darling.”
She is promptly taken aback by her own nonsense.
“Where is the right place for me, Mom?”
My mother is terribly embarrassed; she lovingly tugs at my hair,
purring like a cat, hemming and hawing, trying to come up with some­
thing meaningful.
“Is your ankle very hot? Do you want me to put another compress
on it?”
“No, thanks. It’s not very hot.”
“We’ll all get something to eat today—you can count on it.”
Like the rest of us, she clings to that obsessive notion, which
keeps us going from hour to hour.
“Yes, Mom.”
What I really want to say is: You can count on the fact that I
won’t give up. That nothing and no one will force me to my knees.
That some day I will pay you back for your courageous love. That I
will make sure you don’t have to drudge like a convict. That some­
day I will earn so much money that I’ll be able to buy you a winter
coat, mittens, and warm shoes for your chilblains. That you will
drink as much real coffee as you like, and eat rolls and butter and
real honey.
 Kinski Uncut 11

Yes, that’s what I’d like to say. But I don’t, because I want to sur­
prise her someday.
“It’ll never again get as bad as today, don’t worry, my little
dump—”
“No, Mom.”
Her throat is dry from lying.
“Everything’ll work out,” she whispers very close to my face.
I slowly swallow the lump in my throat to keep from bursting
into tears. I mustn’t wimp out. I need all my strength for what I’m
about to do.
“Yes, Mom.”
Her mouth twists into a weak, cautious smile; she avoids expos­
ing her ruined teeth.
“Aren’t you scared of your toothless mom?”
“Don’t keep saying ‘toothless mom’!”
“But it’s true. Anyone can I see that I have almost no teeth left,
even though I’m still so young. Sometimes I worry that you’re
ashamed of me.”
“That’s not true! I want you to kiss me all my life, even without
teeth!”
She takes my head into her strong worker’s hands and presses it
into her open lap, so that I inhale her arousing smell. I keep my face
very close to her firm abdomen, and my lips graze her hot belly and
her small, impudent tits, until my mouth is on hers. She spreads her
damp lip flesh out over me, and her gigantic, beautiful eyes shine like
glass marbles in her starving face.
As soon as I’m alone I struggle to my feet, hobble as fast as I can
along the street, and crawl into my place under the wooden shelves
outside the grocery store, where the merchandise is piled up in
mounds or pyramids.
I mustn’t make a false move, lose my nerve, or shiver. For delicate
12 K laus K inski

work like this you have to have a calm hand, sensitive fingers. As if
you were playing tiddlywinks.
The free space under the wooden shelves is very low. I have
to stay crouched to avoid banging into the racks and making
them wobble. I have to twist my spine like spaghetti, forcing
my head facedown, low and forward. I wrench my head on my
left or right ear—it all depends—and press my knees against
my tense throat. Right on the Adam’s apple. My butt has to stay
down without bumping on the cobblestones; otherwise I’ll tumble
backward. My stomach, liver, and gallbladder squeeze so tight
against my heart and chest that the blood dams up in my veins
and I can only breathe in short gasps. My apron hangs from my
knees, lying on the cobblestones. Its big pocket is where I’ll stash
the goods.
Once I’ve gotten into this position, I can’t risk changing it, except
maybe by lifting either foot like a chicken. But I can’t draw my feet in
like a chicken.
My swollen ankle really hurts when I squat like this. Whenever I
can, I’ll shift my whole body weight to my healthy foot. Maybe the
pain will let up a bit, and I won’t have to yell. But if I can’t help
yelling, I’ll stuff a potato or something into my mouth.
The shopkeeper, whom I recognize by the cheesy stench of
his feet, keeps coming outside to build up all sorts of wares or
remove something from the stands. What a pedant! He keeps feeling
everything up, and his stinky feet stay right in front of my nose for an
eternity. I can escape the stench very briefly by simply not breathing—
until my head almost bursts and I have to inhale a little of the stench to
avoid writhing. Otherwise I can’t do a thing while Cheesy-Feet hangs
around.
If Cheesy-Feet comes out unexpectedly, I have to freeze in mid­
motion. That’s like playing tableaux vivants, where you split your
 Kinski Uncut 13

sides over the craziest petrified gestures. Except that in my tight

squeeze I don’t feel like laughing.
The pain in my ankle gets so unbearable that I shove a cabbage
leaf into my mouth so as not to shriek. . . .
I must have fainted temporarily, but then I come to, with the cab­
bage leaf in my mouth. Panicking like a cornered rat, I try to free my­
self from my agonizing position. No use. My body is dead all the way
down to my tippy-toes. My ears are burning. I feel a stabbing pain in
my chest. My nose is dripping blood on my shoes.
It’s dark out by now. What time is it, for God’s sake? What if the
store’s about to close? The goods on display may be taken inside any
moment! And I’ve got nothing in my apron! Grabbing anything I can
get my numb fingers on, I nearly tear the stands apart.
When I’m fully loaded—I don’t even know with what—I wedge
my way out, bit by bit. Straightening up centimeter by centimeter, I fi­
nally scream in pain.
Luckily no one’s in front of the store, nor is anyone walking by.
I’m nearly across the street when a passing motorbike catches me
and drags me along for some thirty yards, with my head bumping on
the asphalt.
The accident is all the more idiotic because the traffic is usually
very light in this neighborhood and I always watch like a hawk when I
cross the street. It probably happened because I’m so feeble and I can
only limp.
By the time the biker finally stops, the contents of my apron have
catapulted every which way. Lemons, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes,
monkey bread have ricocheted through the air like bullets. A small jar
ofjam has shattered on the sidewalk.
Pedestrians yell at the biker as if they’re about to lynch him. Pale
as a ghost, he cringes like a kicked puppy, shielding his head with his
elbows. I myself have a hole in my skull.
14 K laus K inski

Bleeding profusely, I try to regather the food in my apron. The

pedestrians are so touched that they unhand the biker and carry me
home along with whatever loot’s still edible.

Rainy days are bad for stealing. Snowy days are even worse. When it’s
freezing out, the stands are moved inside the store. Besides, you can’t
possibly squat under the racks if the street is icy.
When a store is empty—of customers, that is—we need a gang so
that the shoplifting won’t be noticed. I don’t like working in groups. If
there’s a bunch of you, the loot has to be divvied up among too many
people, and there’s always a fight. Of course, you can barge into a
store, just grab something, and then split. This method sounds very
crude, but a surprise attack usually works. By the time they catch on,
you’re already at the other end of town. Naturally, you’ve gotta scoot
like a rabbit. There’s one disadvantage, though: You can never set
foot in that store again.
Yes—getting something to eat depends partly on the weather.
Often we sit on the cold floor in our room until late at night, with
empty stomachs and no toys. For if it’s a harsh winter day, we can’t
even go outdoors. We have no warm clothing. No coat, no mittens,
no boots.
Aside from our frostbite, we’re inured to the cold, but my
mother is worried about all of us because Arne has asthma. Achim
has never even had the sniffles. Inge is a solid rock. My father has
never been sick a day his life, and my mother has never worn a win­
ter coat. I myself may land on my nose if I run too fast, but I’ve never
been ill.
I stand at the window like a zoo animal standing on its hind legs at
the bars of its cage.
 Kinski Uncut 15

If only this miserable building didn’t stink so horribly. A stench of de­

cay oozes from every nook and cranny so that I seriously wonder
where the landlord has hidden his dead mother’s body to avoid
coughing up for a funeral. He’s such a shithead that he even counts
the apples on his two scrawny apple trees, the strawberries in their
lousy patches, and the gooseberries on their stunted bushes.
As soon as he realizes that we’ve begun stealing, he rages like
a wild boar in scrub. He’s so scared of not completing the harvest
in one day that he simply gulps down everything, whole handfuls,
without chewing as he walks. Meanwhile he curses like a woman, in a
quavery voice, lamenting that he’s been taken in.
The apples he picks are stone hard. No one could eat them
without developing jaundice.
But the bastard is also a pawnbroker, extortionist, and blood­
sucker. He pulls my mother’s wedding band off her finger! What can
we do? We don’t have a choice. We can’t pay the rent. We have no
food and no fuel. He knows we don’t. He also knows that I steal. All he
has to do is blab what he knows, and we’re done for. It’s a vicious cir­
cle. If my mother accepts his loans, she’ll be his for life. If she refuses,
we’ll starve and freeze to death because he’ll throw us out into the
street. Or turn us in. Or both. How will it end? Will my mother have to
go to bed with him? I believe that her fear of becoming a whore enables
her to endure any humiliation. First she begs him to at least leave her
wedding band on her finger. She says she’s willing to sign an IOU. He
tells her not to worry, he’s going to pull the ring off her finger anyway.
That’s what happens when you pawn something. So the fucker pulls
the ring off her finger. A notched band, somewhat lighter than the rest
of her tanned skin, remains on my mother’s ring finger.
16 K laus Kinski

Every morning we’re chewed up by bedbugs. Our faces are

puffed up, too. I tell myself these are mosquito bites—they’re not as
disgusting. The bedbugs are everywhere. In the old mattress we got
from the rag dealer, in the fart-soaked couch, and especially behind
the decaying wallpaper. Gigantic breeding grounds. Our bed and the
walls are thoroughly bloodstained, as if we’d killed one another. After
all, it’s our blood they’re covered with, and it squirts and smears
whenever we lean against the wall, making them burst, or when we
squoosh them with our fingers.
As for the cockroaches, when they’re fully grown they’re the size
of baby turtles. We burn them alive. Otherwise they scoot away so in­
credibly fast that we usually just manage to scorch their asses. We
stamp on the silverfish, but it’s no use. There are too many of them.
We have no bathroom. We wash at the kitchen faucet or under
the street pump, with soft soap or sand. On some winter days there’s
an icicle hanging from the faucet. We break it off and wash with it.
There’s no such thing as hot water. If my mother boils water, it’s usu­
ally for our chilblains. The winters are so murderously cold that we
sleep in our clothes. To treat our frostbite we have to stick our hands
and feet into boiling water. This makes the chilblains so painful that
all we can do is shriek. But the treatment doesn’t help. Our chilblains
keep breaking open, filling with pus, and itching, even through the
entire summer.
Our toilet is a hole with a lid. If you raise the lid, you nearly pass
out from the stench of piss and shit. Pissing outdoors is a lot more
hygienic anyway. And I’d much rather take a dump in the bushes.
Once when I was asleep I pissed on my sister because I dreamed she
was a tree. f
We have no electric light. Either the current’s been turned off or
there’s no line. In any case, I’ve never seen a light bulb burning. We’ve
gotten used to it by now, and we’re developing radar sense, like bats.
 Kinski Uncut 17

We’re always starving. Even if I could shoplift every day, we still

wouldn’t have enough.
The leech has locked up all his food, not to mention his money
and other valuables. All the doors and skylights are heavily
padlocked, and, like a guard in a prison, he carries a clutch of
keys around day and night, always remaining within range of
vision and never spending much time away even when he goes
shopping.
If we have briquettes and can start a fire, we huddle at the Dutch
stove, pressing our frostbitten hands and feet—and sometimes our
mouths as well—against the tiles.
My mother drudges for us from dawn till dusk, and she’s grateful
if she can earn a few meager pennies by washing other people’s filthy
laundry. Her despair explodes in wild outbursts:
“I’m totally useless in this world! I’m not even capable of feed­
ing my own kids! And what about you? Why don’t you have a job?
Why can’t you keep your trap shut when someone finally hires you?
Why did I have to meet you, of all men? We move from one bedbug-
infested hole to the next and we live like pigs! Why?!”
Sometimes I think it won’t be long before my mother collapses al­
together. If she does any work, she trembles so hard that she drops
everything. What’ll happen if she gets worse?
My father never says a word during my mother’s fits. He lets all
the insults and accusations wash over him. It’s only when she calms
down a little and stops berating him that he picks up my desperate
mother, who’s collapsed.
When we toss and turn at night because we can’t stretch out and
our bones ache, my father sneaks out of the room to leave us his part
of the bed. He then often sits in a chair all night or wanders forlornly
through the streets. He never sets foot in a bar or spends money on
himself, even for a beer.
18 Klaus Kinski

Christmas Eve. The festival of peace and joy. Our room is icy and so
dark that we can’t even see one another. Nobody says a word. We can
barely hear each other breathing. But I know we’re all here.
During the past few weeks I’ve watched people lugging packages
and Christmas trees from dawn till dusk. Now, from our window, I
can seen the burning candles on the Christmas trees behind the cur­
tains in the buildings across the way, I can see the multicolored balls
and the flickering tinsel, the wreaths of gold and silver paper and the
transparent stars glued to the windowpanes.
I’ve stolen a crippled Christmas tree, but we have no candles or
any of the other glittery stuff to decorate it. We don’t even have a cast-
iron stand for holding it upright. It leans wearily in a corner like a
hunchbacked child being punished.
The only adornments on our window are the glimmering frost
flowers—millions of the finest crystals, an inexhaustible wealth of pat­
terns lavishly spread across the glass and far more beautiful than the
most expensive curtain.
I imagine how warm it now must be in the other apartments,
where people may even be walking on carpets. I picture the food stew­
ing in the pots or baking in the ovens. I conjure up the fragrances.
The countless packages of gifts that have already been opened, and
the countless others still sheathed in shiny, magical paper, mysteri­
ously lying under the heavily laden branches. Suddenly I unwrap the
packages myself. I marvel at the board games, the Erector sets, the
steam engines. . . . I attach the skates, the ice skates, to my bare
feet. . . . I sit bare-assed on the brand-new sled and let myself be
pulled across the Persian rug. . . . I press the wool sweater to my
cheek and it’s as soft as the down of fledglings. . . . I try on the mit­
tens, I deeply inhale the aroma of the box calfskin of my new boots, I
 Kinski Uncut 19

kiss their genuine leather soles and take them along to bed. . . . I weep
over the little girl with the sulfur matches and laugh at the Katzenjam­
mer Kids and the other cartoon characters. . . . And I’m so deeply en­
grossed in the volume of fairy tales that I come to only when the
children’s post office falls on my toes. With the rubber stamps I stamp
everything that’s stampable and I paste a tiny children’s postage
stamp to my father’s bald head. I kiss my teddy bear on the mouth and
eyes, beat the tin drum, and shoot the air gun. . . . I play the accor­
dion, play the harmonica, and blast the jazz trumpet. . . . I lay the
curving tracks of the toy train around the bed and table legs and the
straight tracks through the whole bright, warm apartment. . . . I rock
on the gaudy hobbyhorse until my head whirls. . . . I crack nuts, I
endlessly stuff gingerbread, lebkuchen, and marzipan into my mouth
and I munch nougat, almond cookies, Stollen, dates, figs, and all the
candy on the tree. . . . I let the soft dough of the butter biscuits and
sugar pastries slowly melt on my tongue before I swallow it. . . . Wait!
The roast goose! How could I forget it?! The drumstick belongs to
me! Whyjust one? I want both drumsticks. . . . I tear apart both wings
and the breast flesh underneath and shove everything together with
mountains of red cabbage and steamed apples down my gullet. I drink
the sauce straight out of the ladle. . . . I also have to push down a
couple of dry boiled potatoes, nothing on them. . . . Maybe I’ve over­
done it, guzzling the rich sauce down by the ladle. In any event, I’m
bursting at the seams. My teeth are aching from the sweets and the
nuts, which I always crack with my teeth. After a belch and a fart, I fall
asleep in this Never-Never Land—while roast pigeons try to flutter
into my snoring mouth, and sausages and entire hams drop from the
trees like ripe fruit. . . .
It’s still dark when I wake up on the cold floor and hear my
mother weeping. I smack my face to see if I’m dreaming. It hurts. So
this is reality. My eyes instantly adjust to the darkness. My mother
20 Klaus K inski

can’t be too far from me. Right. She sits at the table with her face
buried in her hands. I crawl over to caress her. When I grope in her
direction, I find both my brothers clinging to her thighs. My sister is
asleep on her feet, her head sideways on the tabletop. At the window
my father’s silhouette peels out of the night; he seems to be staring im­
mobile into the snow.

The pawnbroker has told my mother to go to bed with him if she

wants to get her wedding ring back and to keep him from denouncing
us to the police. My father, who has the loving-kindness of Jesus
Christ, goes over, and his gigantic fists crack the bastard’s face open
like an ax.
Now we’re sitting in the street with our rags tied up in cartons.
Thank goodness it’s spring. I pump the new air into my lungs as if I’d
been buried alive.
Four A.M. We’ve been on the move since we got thrown out of
the room and we’re making the rounds of third-class hotels. Nobody
wants us. They get turned off the instant they see our “baggage.”
Nor does anyone want kids. And four at that. And imagine what we
look like!
My father now tries to do it alone. The rest of us hide when he
rings for the night clerk. My father wedges his “monocle” into his
eye, convinced it makes an impression. But that’s bullshit. He has
no hat, and his face and head haven’t been shaved in days. He looks
like an escaped convict. The night clerks are suspicious anyway if
someone shows up at dawn without a suitcase, and all of them,
without exception, want to be paid in advance. So it’s fucked up.
We’re totally wiped out and so tired and hungry that we stagger like
drunkards.
At seven A.M. we’re finally taken in by a flophouse near the rail-
 Kinski Uncut 2 1

road terminal. Once again six of us in one room and in one bed. My
mother has her period and starts hemorrhaging. No doubt because of
the terrible stress. Her legs have to be propped up. She occupies half
the bed. We can’t sleep anyway—we’re too hungry. We keep bump­
ing into one another and it hurts like hell.
My brothers and sisters don’t go to school. Not till we have an
apartment. This is a new neighborhood for me to steal in; I have to get
my bearings. Besides, the traffic is murderous, and I can’t go out into
the street. When we can’t stand our hunger anymore, Arne is sent out
to beg for cake crumbs in a bakery. But he returns without a single
crumb.
The racket in the street is unbearable. So is the smoke from the
station. And then the struggle for every crust of bread. Money!
Money! Where should it come from?
My mother stays on her feet as if struggling to reach some deci­
sion. Then she resolutely goes to a bakery and spends her last dime
on two cookies for me. Now we have to walk instead of riding the trol­
ley. She stubbornly refuses to have a bite of one of the cookies.
It’s raining cats and dogs. Outside the hotel we run into my fa­
ther. He hasn’t eaten for days. My mother takes off her shoes and sells
them to a secondhand dealer not far from the hotel. He pays her two
marks. We buy a “Warsaw” and a family-size bottle of chocolate milk
and take everything back to the hotel.
A Warsaw consists of repeatedly charred cutoffs of yeast cakes
and anything else that breaks off breads and pastries and whatever
the bakers sweep up from their counters and floors. The whole thing
is pasted into a mass and shoved back in the oven so it holds to­
gether. When you buy it, you have to watch out for broom straws,
wooden splinters, metal, bits of paper, and even shards of glass. A
real Warsaw, which is the size of a loaf of rye bread, costs about
twenty pennies.
2 2 K laus K inski

My father’s got a job! So we lose no time getting out of the hotel! Pal­
lasstrasse. Third rear court. The apartment is a fluke. The previous
tenant committed suicide. For us it’s paradise. One room. Three feet
of corridor. It’s got a kitchen, and we share a latrine with the other
tenants on the landing. We also have a Dutch stove and a gas range.
The range works through a coin meter. You insert a dime and you
can start cooking on the spot. The sealed meters are opened every
month by the gas man, the coins are removed, and the apparatus is
resealed. Our predecessor took over the gas man’s work. He broke
the meter open himself, confiscated the coins, and reinserted them.
Then he gassed himself. Now he’s lying in the morgue, and we’re in
his apartment.
It’s also a nest of bedbugs. We tear down the wallpaper, wipe out
the breeding ground with Flit, and repaint the surface. At first we
sleep on the bare floor. Then we buy an old iron bedstead and an old
mattress from a junk dealer. The mattress is likewise teeming with
bedbugs. We squirt so much Flit into it that we drop like bedbugs
ourselves when we approach the mattress during the day. The stench
of poison is indescribable. We lay our folded clothing on the floor­
boards in the corner. Our window directly faces the backyard of an
elementary school, P.S. 22, where Inge, Achim, and Arne are
enrolled.
Arne’s asthma is so serious now that he turns as blue as ink when
he climbs the stairs to our apartment. He needs very expensive medi­
cine, and my father steals it from the drugstore. It’s a large pouch of
yellow powder, which Arne has to eat spoonfuls of every day. The
rest of us envy him for his powder, because it’s something to eat. My
mother has to hide it so we don’t gobble it up.
I’m sent to a children’s home because I don’t attend school yet.
 Kinski Uncut 23

This way, the others have more to eat and more room to sleep in.
Mainly, however, my mother believes that I’ll get enough to eat in the
home and have toys and my own bed. But in reality this so-called
children’s home is something like a penitentiary, and I call it a chil­
dren’s hell.
The torturers who “take care” of us slap us little kids and cane us
on our hands, thighs, and heads if we can’t choke down the swill. I
can’t understand what impels these slave drivers to force us to swal­
low disgusting pieces of fat the mere stench or sight of which makes
me retch.
Some pig puts a brimming bowl of soup in front of me on the
table. Clumps of white, bloated fat are floating in the liquid like
drowned bodies, and the gruesome brew overflows because that
prison slut stuck her thumb in it, all the way up to her wrist. I feel like
puking.
We have to stay at the table until we’ve eaten up, even if it takes us
all day. One child had to sit outdoors at the table all last night. This
morning he’s dead. We don’t find out why.
I can’t get the lumps of fat down. I just can’t. I keep them in my
cheek pouches for hours, like a squirrel. I don’t even swallow the
saliva that gathers in my mouth—otherwise I’d taste the fat and vomit.
I breathe only through my mouth in order to tune out my taste buds. I
barely stir. The least puff of air caused by a movement might jog my
nausea, making me disgorge the swill.
“Well, is the little devil tamed? Have we broken his resis­
tance?”
I can’t even answer that I wish this prison slut a slow, agonizing
death: I can’t talk because my cheek pouches are full of fat.
“You’re not saying anything. Could it be you haven’t swallowed?
Let me see. Open your mouth!”
That’s too much for me. I puke right in her goddamn face. I puke
24 K laus Kinski

up everything, including what’s in my belly. All that shit shoots up

spasmodically from my gaping gullet like from a manure pump, prac­
tically ripping my guts apart, until I can’t pump up anymore.
I writhe in cramps and dash off, shrieking, while the beast nearly
chokes on my vomit, yelling curses at me until her voice goes.
Now these bloodhounds fan out, trying to catch me. I scream and
scream. . . . What do they get out of torturing us? Nothing but tor­
ture. Never a smile when we’re bewildered. Never comfort when
we’re sad. Never a kind word when we cry for our moms. I scream un­
til they’re all scared of me. They probably think I’ve lost my mind.
The head torturer sends for my mother. I scream and scream, I just
don’t stop screaming. . . .
When my mother comes, I nearly go insane. I dig my nails into
her. I want to return to her womb. We hold one another so tight that
we become a single body, and it hurts when our bodies come apart,
and I walk out of the children’s hell, clutching her hand.

My mother’s got a job. Homework. Sewing toiletry pouches. For

every pouch she gets between fifteen and twenty pennies. In a store
the same pouch goes for twenty marks. A markup of ten thousand
percent.
First she has to get a sewing machine. A new one is out of the
question. My mother decides on an old Singer. We pay the thirty-
five marks in eighteen monthly installments. Naturally it’s not an
electric machine. My mother has to keep treading down nonstop.
But the big problem is the machine itself. It’s so noisy that the other
tenants, right and left, above and below, protest because they can’t
get a wink of sleep. Because they can’t hear their radios. Because
they can’t have a quiet breakfast, lunch, or supper—they can’t even
find peace in the latrine. They bang on the walls, they whack on the
 Kinski Uncut 25

ceiling, they stamp on the floor, they yell from the windows, they
ring up a storm on our buzzer, they write threatening letters, and
they complain to the landlord. All because of the sewing machine,
for my mother won’t stop sewing until her legs have swollen up, and
she collapses in exhaustion at the machine. In this position she
wakes up again and promptly resumes treading. When a delivery
deadline approaches, she never leaves her place at the sewing ma­
chine except to go to the toilet. She even eats at the sewing machine.
My sister does the cooking.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat . . . Rat-a-tat-tat-tat . . . The sewing machine be­
comes a nightmare not only for the other tenants but for us too. At
night the racket wakes us up, even if we do manage to fall asleep. The
only music that rattles toward us in the staircase when we come home:
the sewing machine.
We spread sheaves of old newspapers on the floor to muffle the
agony. But that doesn’t help much, and soon we’re going to have to
move out of this apartment too. For aside from my father’s meager
wages, the sewing machine is our only provider.
We live in constant hostility with the other tenants. You can un­
derstand them. They’re all workers who need their sleep because they
have to get up early. They even look daggers at us kids, as if it were
our fault that we have to help our mother sew at night instead of sleep­
ing. We never get a night’s sleep, we merely doze at intervals of one or
two hours. In between we work in shifts. Two kids get into bed with
our father and two sit on the floor next to the rattling machine, passing
the individual sewn and stitched parts from hand to hand after snip­
ping away the extra rubber lining close to the seams or biting off the
dangling threads. This is a real assembly line, and no one must get out
of the work rhythm, much less fall asleep in exhaustion, so long as the
sewing machine rattles.
Once the pouches are finished—fifty, one hundred, five hundred,
26 K laus K inski

depending on the order—they are tied into gigantic bales and lugged
to the delivery place. It’s usually far away and can be reached only by
subway or trolley. One of us always accompanies my mother because
she can’t tote the bales alone.
On every delivery day she and her escort then go to Woolworth’s
or the KDW department store. In the food section we eat hot Vienna
sausages with potato salad and lots of mustard and slippery green,
red, and yellow Jell-O.
Delivery day for the pouches is also the day on which the new or­
ders are distributed.
In the staircase women line up in front of the stockroom, where
the slave dealer takes and gives. My mother is inside. I wait in line
with the other women. With their enormous, heavy tied-up bales,
they have clustered into a single endless line of bodies. A line of hu­
man flesh. A sweaty, smelly, twisting, rearing, mutely shrieking line.
Most of them don’t know one another; they’ve never met before. A
few sit on the steps. Others stand leaning against the wall. All of them
are exhausted. Few of them converse, and only softly at that. Others
puff away silently, gazing into space. Women of all ages and sizes. A
fat one, whose bloated body certainly didn’t get that way from
overeating, gasps for air. Then there’s one with enormous hips and
drooping, milked-out udders; she must have birthed and nursed at
least ten kids. She peels an orange with her teeth, spitting the pieces of
rind out in all directions. Then, next to me, a young, lurking slut with
heavy thighs, a bubble butt, and a small, sharp belly under the taut,
too-short skirt, its ripped slit patched up grossly and clumsily. The
sweat rings in her armpits have eaten their way to the charged, swing­
ing boobs with long, hard nipples boring like nails into her shabby
rayon blouse. To redden her parted lips, she uses a lipstick that smells
sultry. A scrawny crone with snow-white hair clutches the banister to
avoid toppling over. A very pregnant mom-to-be, likewise waiting
 Kinski Uncut 27

with a gigantic packet, is carefully helped down to a step by two

women. They unbutton her coat so that she can breathe more easily.
But the oxygen has been totally drained from the air, and every breath
you take hurts.
“If you don’t like it, you can walk the streets!”
The slave dealer is bellowing behind closed doors.
The line of women winces. Their eyes take on a dangerous,
leaden glow. The young slut next to me giggles soundlessly to herself.
Her skirt is bursting at the seams. She is still applying lipstick.
“This humiliation is the worst part of it,” the bloated woman gasps.
“Why?” the slut retorts. “You’re richer by one experience.”
“Or knocked up,” says the one who’s broad in the beam.
“You pig!” hisses one of the two women who are fanning the very
pregnant one on the step.
My mother comes through the door. Bewildered she straightens
out her dress, which is plastered to her body. She hastily yanks me
down the stairs.
Long after we reach the street we’re still dashing along. We don’t
talk. I just grab her strong hand tighter, kissing it as I hurry.
We scurry into Woolworth’s and devour our red-hot Vienna
sausages with lots of mustard.
Rat-a-tat-tat . . . Rat-a-tat-tat . . . Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. The
sewing machine’s rattling rattles everything to bits.
To keep me from getting on my mother’s nerves all day, they send
me to a part-time kindergarten at the grade school that my brothers and
sisters attend. No one pays us any heed. There are neither toys nor pic­
ture books. When we play ring-around-the-rosy, we shuffle in a circle,
apathetic, like old dwarves. The kindergarten teacher does her nails,
keeps going to the toilet, and kids around with every guy. Our ears perk
up only for the one daily meal. The rest of the time we timidly hang out
in the stench, infecting one another with our whooping cough.
28 Klaus K inski

At last I’m allowed to go outdoors again by myself. So I start casing

the neighborhood. There are lots of places to shoplift from.
I steal from markets and department stores. I grab food, clothes,
linen, toys, books, lipsticks for my mother, and a doll for my sister.
For my father I rip off garters, suspenders, a tie, and collar but­
tons, which keep falling off and which he can never find with his lousy
monocle. I steal a soccer ball for my brothers, and if it’s someone’s
birthday, I go to a park and take home lilacs or roses or asters, de­
pending on the season.
Meanwhile I’ve started school. I believe that the female teachers
get turned on when they make us bend over, so that our short pants
stretch very tightly over our butts, before they cane us. Sometimes they
grab our ass cheeks. When they do, they come very close, smelling of
fish. I’d love to tear down the panties of some randy teacher slut and
whip her bare ass until the cane shatters into smithereens!
I don’t know which class bores the shit out of me the most. It’s
unbearable!
The religion teacher calls me up to his desk after entering an “A”
for me in his book. He promises me the highest marks and gives me
three suckers.
“In what religion were you baptized, my son?”
(Where does he get off calling me his son?)
“None.”
“None?”
“None. I was never baptized.”
“Why, that’s horrible . . . ! Then how come you know the entire
New Testament by heart?”
“I’m a fast learner.”
“But how in God’s name can you go to church if you’ve never
been baptized?”
“I’ve never been inside a church.”
 Kinski Uncut 2 9

“What about your parents?”

“How should I know?”
“Have your parents prohibited you from going to church?”
“No.”
“What do your parents say about church?”
“My father goes nuts when he hears church bells.”
“What about your mother?”
“My mother says that you people torture little Jesus.”
It was a good thing I’d put the three suckers in my mouth right
away, for I’m convinced the religion teacher would have fished them
out again if I hadn’t already sucked them into tiny remnants.
He erases my “A.”

Since we still don’t have a bathroom and we wash in the kitchen, my

sister has started to feel self-conscious. She’s got a big, bad ass now,
and her cotton undershirt has long since gotten too snug for her impa­
tiently growing tits. In her cotton panties her bursting chestnut stands
out sharply under her juvenile belly.
I live almost entirely in the street. In winter, when we’re frozen
through and through, we lie on the grates of the subway shafts.
Whenever a train thunders by under the asphalt, a smelly stream of
warm air squeezes up through the bars, thawing our bodies for mo­
ments at a time. In summer the asphalt is hot and the street stifling.
The municipal pools charge admission. Wannsee Lake, a mass swim­
ming hole, where we can climb over the barbed-wire fence, is twelve
miles away, and transportation costs money. The Havel lakes are
likewise too far off. At Grünewald Lake it’s wall-to-wall people. The
so-called paddle ponds are blacker than a mud bath and as warm as
piss; sometimes a turd comes floating straight toward you at mouth
level. But oh, yes, there are possibilities. We can latch on to the door
30 Klaus K inski

of the rear car in an tirban train and ride all the way across Berlin and
even farther. If another train comes along, you have to flatten yourself
against the closed door, otherwise you’ll be crushed between the two
trains.
Sometimes we lie down in the gutter and enjoy getting a shower
from the street-cleaning trucks. The water is cool and not stale, be­
cause it’s tanked up fresh and used right away. Once the truck has
lumbered past us, we jump up, catch up with it, and throw ourselves
in the gutter, in the path of the shower. We keep repeating this until
they turn the water off.
The drivers of the sanitation trucks hate us and they kick any kid
they manage to grab. One kid actually bleeds to death in the gully.
What happens is that he’s lying in the gutter, and I’m just about to
throw myself down next to him—when he suddenly straightens up.
One end of the water pipe on the side of the truck slices through his
carotid artery.

The Berliners’ oxygen tanks are their summer shacks in the country­
side. These are the mother animals that suckle them. And they suckle
me too.
There are so many of these gardens in Berlin that I can’t even
count them all. There are thousands. I know nearly all of them and
I’ve stolen fruit in nearly all of them.
It’s stressful climbing into one of the gardens; the suspense is aw­
ful. The biggest problem is the dogs. Outside some gardens I can’t
even stop to catch my breath without some mutt baring its teeth at me.
Others foam at the mouth, hoarsely yapping behind their fences, as if
they had rabies. These are dogs that absolutely have to bite some­
thing. Preferably a human being, of course.
The most dangerous dog by far—it’s always a German shep-
 Kinski Uncut 31

herd—is the kind that neither barks nor gives you any chance to de­
fend yourself, because it doesn’t attack you. It just gawks at you. Non­
stop. With its cutting amber eyes. Wolf eyes. It watches you. Controls
each and every one of your moves. God help you if you so much as
stir. And heaven protect you if you so much as think of sneaking away
quite inconspicuously. You can barely afford to breathe. Don’t even
think of running away. That would be a bad joke.
You have to talk to these wonderful mutts. Very softly, of course.
First very faintly, yet loud enough to make them curious. Don’t talk
very clearly as yet; they needn’t understand every word. Let them
puzzle it out, keep them on tenterhooks. Then you have to get to the
nitty-gritty very slowly. You have to arouse their curiosity, their
emotions. . . .
I start crying to soften the dog. I bawl so convincingly that tears
bounce down my cheeks. The dog is embarrassed; it turns away. And
Io and behold! The delightful little doggy actually licks away my tears.
I’d love to dognap it, but it wouldn’t fit through the barbed wire. I
can’t toss it over the wire either—the mutt’s too heavy.
Last time I came away unscathed. This time I don’t. All night
long I’ve been padding around a garden like a panther. No barking.
No dog has shown up. It’s three thirty A.M. The full moon illuminates
everything clearly, including the drunken faces of gigantic sunflowers.
I’ve had my eye on this garden for a long time because it’s got a small
tree with the biggest apples I’ve ever seen. They’re the size of my head
and weigh at least two pounds each.
These apples cast a magic spell on me. I can’t sleep at night; I’m
scared the owner might pick them. I’m gonna have to twist every
single apple from its stem. I mustn’t bruise them. They’re as shiny as
if the owner had waxed them.
Sniffing in all directions I move toward the tree like an Indian.
What a slender tree, I think. It’s like with women. There are very
32 K laus K inski

delicate women with gigantic boobs, they get knocked up after the
very first fuck and bear very strong babies.
I stretch my hands toward the apples. . . . At that instant I think
of one of the hounds in stories, for right before me, a giant of a hound
is standing. It can’t be! He’s the size of a calf! I didn’t see him coming;
I was too fascinated by the giant apples. And he didn’t really come.
He was lying under the tree. All he had to do was stand up to block
the way. He doesn’t bark, he doesn’t growl. Not a peep. He stares at
me mutely. His blond amber eyes bore into mine.
My arm is still stretching through the air. I can’t take it down. The
calf won’t let me. This giant simply won’t allow me to take down my
arm. He won’t allow me any movement at all. He merely twists up his
lips as if he were drawing a sword from its scabbard. He knows that’s
all it takes. His canines, which now appear, are over an inch long.
What should I do? I can’t stand here forever. My situation is so
hopeless that, paradoxical as it may sound, I can barely choke back
my hysterical mirth. Just don’t laugh now! I think. He might take it as
an insult. The shiny giant apples derisively sway to and fro, as if
shaking their heads at my inexperience. My raised arm starts to hurt.
I’m getting a cramp. When my arm falls down on its own, the dog
leaps at me.
I’m not exactly feeble for a twelve-year-old boy, but his weight
alone knocks me over. I try to cling to him as tight as I can. But I can
barely reach around him. He’s got the fur of a bear. There’s no ques­
tion of my struggling. His teeth snap on my underarm like a fox trap.
His bite isn’t deep, but I’m caught. Even though I’d love to strangle
him, I don’t hate him. He’s too beautiful. Nor do I believe that he
hates me. He’s merely doing his job.
Now my opponent’s face is right in front of mine. Our lips are al­
most touching. Desperate, I bite him. First his lips. I feel the hot, slob­
bering flesh in my mouth. This is useless, so I bite him in the nose—so
 Kinski Uncut 33

hard that he yowls, opening the fox trap of his teeth for an instant. My
salvation is the thick shaft of a shovel that tumbles in my direction as
we brawl. I grab the shovel and wedge it into his gaping maw, locking
it. His long, sharp teeth dig in so deep that he can’t remove them from
the wood. Luckily I always have string in my pants pocket. Grabbing
his head together with the shovel shaft in his maw, I knock it with one
hand into the sweat box and tie the two halves of his mouth together
with my free hand. “Sorry, boy,” I think, “but now we’re even.”
Then, bleeding like a stuck pig, I dash out of the garden after grabbing
at least one super-apple from the tree.
I rob other gardens daily, hourly. The trick is never to step into
the same garden twice.
All I can see is the tops of high plum trees. Just the tops. For I
can’t see into the garden itself. Try as I might to circle the garden and
locate the splendid plums, I keep running up against gigantic thorny
hedges of wild roses, real hills of roses that grow into mountains, to­
tally blocking my view. Yes, they are so rankly entangled that I can’t
even guess which property these fat plums belong to. The only pos­
sible route is the thorny one.
The goddamn wall of thorns is very hard at one point, and that’s
where I enter.
My hands and legs start bleeding after my first few steps; the
thorns tear off pieces of my skin and drill deep into my flesh like dull
knives. Who cares? I have to have the plums, no matter what it takes.
But the farther up I work my way toward the plum trees, the deeper I
get into the chaos of entangled rose branches, which are as thick as
arms. I have to keep shifting my weight to a single part of my body—a
foot, a shoulder, a knee, a hand, a single finger. I don’t know how I’ll
ever get out of this jungle, which instantly closes behind me like an en­
chanted fairy-tale forest.
I’ve almost made it—there’s only a single thick branch in front of
34 K laus K inski

me. I have to grab hold beneath me and pull myself over an abyss.
Then I’ll be able to peer down into the garden as if I were looking
through a tiny open window. I no longer feel the pain of the thorns,
but I do feel them on all sides, nibbling my body like sharks. I try to
resist as little as possible to weaken their piercing. It’s not easy be­
cause my situation requires all my energy and muscle power, and I
have to exert my body to the utmost.
Now I grab a branch and pull my chest across it. My feet, with no
way out, are deep in the chaos that tangles below me and above me, so
that my lower body hangs like a suspension bridge over the thorny
abyss. Another inch—and there I am! What I see knocks me for a
loop! Naked women! I’m too horny to count them, but I figure there
must be ten or fifteen! They loll in beach chairs, sit on chairs, or lie on
towels on the ground. Their bodies are oiled up. A few sport deep
tans; others are still light, some white. One is as red as a lobster, and
she sits in the shade. All of them are stark naked. They change posi­
tions. Stretch sensuously. Open their legs. Draw in their thighs.
Spread. Lie on their sides, on their backs, on their bellies. Stick out
their assess, their tits, their pussies. Who would have dreamed that
such plums were waiting here for me! The whole thing is so over­
whelming that I think I must be dreaming. They barely say a word,
barely make a sound. Everything is harshly lit, overexposed, as if I
were looking into the white sun.
I get a raging hard-on, which is a problem in my position and in
my tight pants, which I’ve long since outgrown.
One of the women is right in front of me and under me. She has
broad shoulders like a swimmer and short, flat breasts with huge, al­
most swarthy nipples. A sturdy, fleshy pelvis. Embedded in it is a
small belly with an umbilical bulge. Huge, outstretched thighs, robust
calves, and strong, wide feet and hands. Her crotch hair, growing
thickly across her pelvis and belly, reminds me, oddly enough, of the
 Kinski Uncut 35

thicket I’m hanging in—and her unusually arched mound of Venus

rises above her fat vaginal lips, which open like a crater. I can see the
rosy interior of her twat, where a sweet drop glitters.
Another woman, her skin all white, rolls over in her beach chair,
revealing her small, gaping butt, so that I can see straight into her
open asshole.
I must be right over the toilet, for a young, naked girl with imma­
ture tit buds and skimpy crotch hair comes toward my thicket prison
and vanishes beneath me. I hear a door close. Then the bolt. And then
the relieving piss.
As I strain to the utmost to move forward and get a better view of
the other naked women, my torso smashes deep into the thorny jungle
below me, and I hang there, bleeding, unable to stir, my head dan­
gling, until I black out. . . . When the complete hush tells me that all
the women have gone home, I struggle my way out of the wilderness
of roses.
I stalk through another garden. Not a sound. Not a soul. . . . I’m
just loading my shirt chock-full of velvety apricots, which I always raise
to my lips as if they were very young little cunts. . . . All at once, from
the corners of my eyes, I glance through an open window—and see
her! She can’t be older than I. She sits there legs akimbo, masturbating.
Her eyes are shut tight. . . . She moans . . . whimpers . . . reaches or­
gasm. . . . I open my trousers . . . in a trance like a tomcat in h e a t. . .
I’m as drenched as if I’d pissed in my shorts.

My outings to the garden colonies are always brief. I have to return to

my asphalt jungle.
“Coal! Get your red-hot coat!”
I ring every buzzer. The people hate me. It’s not working; I have
to talk to the coal dealer. He pays my salary in coal. At worst, I can sell
3 6 Klaus K inski

it. The more I carry in one day, the more briquettes I earn. I can lug
up to a hundred briquettes on my back, and I drag them until all I can
do is cough bits of coal.
I beat rugs until I almost choke on the stench of dust and filth. But
with every stroke I knock a little more of my poverty dead.
I tote dirty clothes to the laundries. I soak them in troughs, scrub
them on the washboards till my fingers bleed. I heat the irons. I put
sheets and feather-bed cases through the wringers. I stretch curtains
on the drying frames. I mix starch for collars and home-deliver the
clean wash.
I shine shoes. Five pennies a pair. I help the sanitation men gather
the scattered garbage in the cans. I pull the carts of the street sweepers
when they take five to grab a smoke. I collect butts in the streets, make
new cigarettes from the tobacco, and sell them to jobless people, re­
tirees, and war invalids. I push crippled and injured people around in
their wheelchairs when they want to go to the park for a game of cards.
I assist the hurdy-gurdy men, picking up the five- and ten-penny coins
tossed from the windows and carrying the sad, threadbare monkey on
my shoulder when the man has to go take a leak. The monkey’s always
chained to the hurdy-gurdy.
The most lucrative work is helping the pallbearers. This is pos­
sible only if the near and dear are paupers who can’t afford to tip the
pallbearers and who pay no attention to my presence. I’m paid by
the pallbearers, whose breath always reeks of booze; they give me be­
tween fifty pennies and a mark per cadaver, it all depends. My job is to
wash the stiff body before it’s put in the coffin. If the dead person has
to wear something, then the pallbearers help me dress him because I
can’t turn the heavy corpse over by myself, and his arms and legs can’t
be bent.
I’m supposed to strip a dead seven-year-old girl, wash her, and
slip her into a little frock. No mother is to be seen. No father. No sib­
 Kinski Uncut 37

lings. Nobody but an old man sitting in the corner and talking to him­
self. The girl is holding a one-eared teddy bear. To undress, wash,
and clothe her I’ll have to extricate the clinging teddy bear.
“I can’t,” I tell the pallbearers.
One of the men gingerly tugs at the teddy bear, which the little
girl refuses to release. Then he shakes it. No use. When he tries to
wrench it away, the brisk pull makes the corpse sit up as if she means
to say, “You can yank all you like, it won’t help!”
I dash out of the place.
The most gruesome labor of all is trucking the hospital refuse to
the garbage dump. I don’t sit with the driver; I have to hold the cans
fast during the trip. They contain not only pus-smeared gauze, blood-
soaked muslin, and encrusted bandages, but also—incomprehensible
as it sounds—amputated human legs, hands, feet, and bowels. If the
wrapping paper spontaneously opens up, a bloodless human arm
looms out.
Whenever I have no work, I break into cigarette machines and
pay telephones. I don’t like doing it—you never know whether you’re
being watched. I can’t afford to wind up in juvenile jail.
I wash fish at the markets. I can’t get the stench out of my clothes.
I believe there is no stench that I haven’t stunk of.

On account of the sewing machine we get an eviction notice. My

mother ODs on sleeping pills. My brother describes how my father
ran weeping alongside her when the orderlies carried her down the
steps on a litter. Her head kept sliding off and bumping against the
staircase walls.
“We’ve got an apartment!” my mother exclaims once they pump
out her stomach and she’s back on her feet. “It costs a fortune. But we’ll
have light and sunshine and flower boxes with flowers and a balcony!”
38 K laus K inski

It’s true. She’s found a fourth-floor apartment facing the street; it

has a three-foot-by-six-foot balcony with a southern exposure. So
we’ll have light and sunshine. But I mustn’t think about the sewing
machine. None of us wants to think about the sewing machine. And
yet we feel it like a heel on our necks.
The apartment has four small rooms, a kitchen, the first private
toilet we’ve ever had, and a bathroom with a stove that has to be fueled
from the hall. The rent is exorbitant—my mother’s right. It’s sixty-
eight marks a month. But we’ll manage somehow.
Every morning, when Inge goes to the toilet, she passes my bed,
wearing only a much-too-short cotton shirt and much-too-short
panties. If she’s certain that everyone else is asleep, it’s even worse: af­
ter pissing, she wears only the shirt, which doesn’t even reach over
her stubbly cunt and her aggressive buns.
What in the world can I do? Should I follow her? And what if
someone else has to shit or piss and sees me coming out of the john
with her? So when? Where? I don’t even know if she’d let herself be
fucked. Besides, I share a room with Arne and Achim between my
parents’s bedroom and Inge’s. Her bed is separated from Arne’s by a
wall. And it squeaks. Achim’s bed is about three feet from Inge’s door,
which creaks like an old cart. Inge spends each morning in school. In
the afternoon she helps my mother. Or she does homework. So do
Arne and Achim. Evenings are impossible because no one ever misses
supper. I have to find a way! I can’t take it anymore!
My kidneys are infected and I have to sleep a lot. In the daytime
too. That’s no good. I can’t get my mind offlnge or my hands off my
hard cock, day or night.
This afternoon nobody’s at home. Where can they all be? Some­
one’s in the toilet; I hear it flushing. I quickly turn over and pretend to
be asleep. Someone enters my room—I don’t know who it is—bends
over me . . . raises the covers . . . gets in bed with me. . . . I hold my
 Kinski Uncut 39

breath. It’s Inge! I’m dumbfounded! My eyes are still shut, but I know
it’s Inge. Her flesh grazes me. I smell her. She climbs over me, turns
her butt toward me, and likewise pretends to fall asleep immediately.
In any case she doesn’t touch me. Nor do I touch myself. But her ass
cheeks touch my prick, which is so hard that it hurts. She still doesn’t
move. She doesn’t pull her ass cheeks back, either, or squeeze them
together. Anything but. They feel like they’re opening. There’s no
doubt about it: She must feel my cock all the way to her cunt.
We can’t keep lying there forever like this. If she didn’t want
something from me, she wouldn’t have climbed into my bed. That’s
obvious.
I act as if I’m tossing and turning; I murmur in my “sleep” and
place my lower arm on her pelvis accidentally on purpose. I let my
hand slide down her small belly to her twat. I work my forefinger
through her scrubby crotch hair and let it wallow in the twitching
clam, whose warm shell opens promptly and gladly because she raises
her thigh very slightly—and pushes my hand away. Naturally, as if she
were doing it in her sleep. I quickly withdraw my hand and greedily
lick it off. It’s as gooey as if I had thrust it into a bowl of oatmeal.
Now she reaches for my hand on her own and places it back on
her horny clam as she yawns and rolls over on her back. I instantly
stick my finger back in. The more she shoves my hand away, the
wider her sturdy legs spread apart. Her head writhes as if she were
having a nightmare, while her hands grab her thighs. Just as I roll on
top of her, someone opens the front door!
Inge leaps out of the bed, races to her room, and locks herself in.
I talk to no one and eat nothing. At night I can’t sleep a wink, I
just stare at the ceiling. Every so often I go to the toilet and examine
my hard-on. Then I lie down and stare at the ceiling again.
It must be about three A.M. Three thirty at the latest. I sit up and
listen for a long time. Arne and Achim are asleep. I can hear their
40 Klaus K inski

regular breathing. In the room with the balcony my father snores, and
my mother, whose nose is stuffed up, emits a whistling sound. I tiptoe
to my brothers’ beds and lean over. Arne is on his belly like a sack.
Achim’s head rocks to and fro as it did when he was a baby, lulling
him deeper and deeper.
When I turn the knob on Inge’s door, I press against the door
panel with all my strength to prevent even the slightest noise. Natu­
rally the goddamn door creaks, as usual. I should have thought of that
and oiled it.

Earlier we couldn’t sleep because of the sewing machine. Now we’ve

got air raids every night. Every night! Every night we’re yanked out of
sleep three, four, five times and we reel into the basement shelter.
Soon we don’t even get up anymore; we just roll over when the bombs
come hailing down, shattering the buildings around us.
Just why are we so poor? Why can I never sleep at night? Because
bombs keep dropping! Why does my mother have to torture herself
like that? Why didn’t anyone give my dad a break? Why is there a
war? Why? Why? Why?

When I walk through the streets, I keep bumping my head, because I

always whirl around or walk backward so the passing girls and women
won’t escape me. It happens quite automatically. I can’t help it. As
soon as one goes by, I turn and look after her until she slips around a
corner or vanishes somewhere else and is replaced by another, who
comes toward me, from in front, from behind, from the right, from the
left. The worst is when they show up from all sides and I keep spin­
ning like a top so as not to miss a single one. Usually my brow or the
back of my head then bangs into a cast-iron lamppost.
 Kinski Uncut 41

I don’t care how old they are, how young, how big, how little,
how thin, how fat, what kind of hair they have, what kind of skin—
they all cast a magic spell on me.
The first time I kissed a little twat, I was seven. We were alone in
the staircase. I put her on a step, spread her legs, and sniffed around
on her like a puppy.
Now I’m thirteen and try to plug every hole. In the school toilet,
in bushes, in hallways, in basements. Sometimes even in their beds.
In the second back wing of our building there’s a young redhead
with huge blond freckles on her transparent white skin. Her husband
is a garbageman. She constantly loiters outside the front door as if
waiting for someone. She’s bound to have a guy who comes and fucks
her whenever her husband’s at work. Her eyes gaze blankly from her
big skull like empty sockets in a death’s-head. I never see her shop­
ping or working. Just hanging out and waiting for something. Her legs
are really twisted, she’s bowlegged, and she always looks so feeble, as
if she had to lean on someone. I’ve heard she’s got TB, but I think
she’s weak from fucking so much.
Her apartment’s on the ground floor, and the bedroom window,
which is always open, faces a vacant back lot. Sometimes I hang
out there, poking in the rubble, and one morning I heard a guy moan­
ing and a woman shrieking through the open window. The moans
couldn’t have come from her husband. He leaves the house at four A.M.
and doesn’t return until afternoon.
There she is again. I stare at her spellbound, until the death’s-
head turns toward me. She’s one big pussy. Her face. Her eyes, which
now have a dim, gray glow. She takes my hand in her damp, hot hand
and pulls me along.
The bedroom is clammy, and barely any light filters in even
though it’s sunny outdoors. And even though the window’s open, the
place smells of fried potatoes.
42 Klaus K inski

She dashes out of her clothes like an addict whose fix is way over­
due. She has an almost childlike torso with clearly visible ribs and
practically no tits. To make up for that, she’s got an unusually broad,
bowl-shaped pelvis, with sharply converging bones that threaten to
pierce the thin skin. She’s got short legs, which makes her lower body
look even wider. Everything else is pussy, pussy, pussy.
My balls are as hard as stones. She promptly shoves them in too.

A hailstorm of bombs. The tenants have crept into the air raid shelter.
My mother and I are alone. We have nothing to eat. It’s almost dark.
We’re tired and freezing. What else can we do but go to bed? My
mother takes offher clothes in front of me. Her panties, too.
“Come to bed” is all she says.
For three days aerial mines shatter the buildings all around us.

At sixteen I get drafted. When I read the draft notice, I cry. Not be­
cause I’m a coward—I’m not afraid of anyone. But I don’t want to kill
or be killed.
Urban rail, Westkreuz Station. I have to change trains and go to
the paratroop barracks. I detach myself from my mother’s lips. She re­
mains in the compartment, riding on to Schöneberg. She gazes at me
through the dirty panes. Her eyes will leave the station with the train.
“Mom!”

In the paratroops I run into a kid I know.

“Hey, Buddy!” We hug for a long time.
They shove weapons into our hands and say, “Kill the enemy!”
The Limeys’ll beat the shit out of us. My buddy and I never hit
 Kinski Uncut 43

the ground when we hear the grenades yowling. We play a game: The
guy who can hold his unpinned grenade longest is the winner.
Sometimes fighter planes hover in the sky like vultures. Then we
hop around like crazy, flapping our arms, until they spot us, nose­
dive, and shoot at us. When they miss us we grin and thumb our
noses at them. We haven’t the foggiest notion what it’s all about. For
us the rat-a-tat is like New Year’s Eve, when we never had enough
maroons and firecrackers.
Now my buddy’s gone, and I’ve got no one to play with. I’ve gone
astray. Like a lost kid. Not like earlier at the lake, when a kid lost his
brother in the crowd. The kid’s name was announced over loud­
speakers, and you could hear him crying through the mike. Someone
always showed up after a while and took the kid away.
Someone ought to shout over the loudspeaker:
“Boy, sixteen years old, gold-blond hair, huge, violet eyes with
long, dark-brown lashes and a big red mouth, wants to get back to
Buddy. Stop that stupid rat-a-tat\”
The thought makes me laugh. But here no one will take me back
to Buddy.
“Volunteers for patrol, step forward!”
Kiss my ass.
In the abandoned houses, from which the inhabitants have fled, I
find civilian duds. I toss my uniform into a garbage can and put on
whatever I find. A child’s shirt with green and white checks and over­
size women’s panties.
The people must have jumped up from a meal. The plates of food
are half eaten, the glasses half full. Everything is moldy, like in “Sleep­
ing Beauty.”
I strike off in the direction of the grenades and live on mushy
apples. Apples everywhere, lying in water under the trees. The whole
area is flooded with water and apples. I’ve got the runs so bad that I
44 K laus K inski

eat only in a shitting position. In the daytime I can’t even straighten

up to piss. I do it lying down, my body freezing to the ground with my
pissed-up pants.
This is my sixth night of feeding on mushy apples. All at
once, on an inundated meadow, in the gaudy light of signal rockets,
I see: a cow. There are carcasses of cows and horses and even pigs
wherever you look. But a live cow! Grazing in a pasture. It’s absurd!
The cow shines gaudily in the light. More and more signal flares
burst high up in the air and then slowly drift to the ground, melting
into nothingness over the cow’s head. Maybe they’re doing it for
Christmas, I wonder. It must be Christmas about now. . . . Maybe
I’m hallucinating because of all the mush and the endless shitting.
I have to try to get at that cow. Then I’ll pounce on her and slice a
chunk of meat from her body. Maybe I won’t even have to kill her. I’m
bound to find matches or a gas burner in a deserted house. Then I’ll
build a fire and roast my chunk of beef. Maybe I’ll find a pan. Or at
least a pot.
I yank loose my pants, which are frozen fast to the ground. Now it
dawns on me that I have no weapon. I have no rifle, no pistol, not
even a knife, not even a penknife—nothing. Not even a cord to strangle
her with. How am I supposed to kill her? How am I supposed to
slaughter her? I can try to bite through her throat. Yeah, that’s what
I’ll do. I’ll hang on to her neck. After all, I’ve bitten off bottle stoppers
with my teeth. Her throat can’t be harder than a bottle stopper. I’ll
chomp out only a piece of her flesh and then let her go. At worst I’ll
eat the meat raw.
To get to the cow I have to climb over a barbed-wire fence, the
kind that’s usually found on a cow pasture. I’m no more than thirty
feet away from her when she jerks around and gallops off.
“We’ll see who can run faster,” I yell as if she’s broken our agree­
ment to let me nip off a piece of her living flesh. But I’m wrong. I’m
 Kinski Uncut 45

not in my asphalt jungle here and I don’t have sneakers on, I’m wear­
ing hard, waterlogged boots that are much too big for me. Neverthe­
less, near a stretch of barbed-wire fence, I get close enough to grab
one of the cow’s legs. I bury my teeth in the soft inner side of her
thigh, right next to the ass cheek. At that instant her asshole opens,
and a stream of green shit splashes onto my face. Still shitting, she
jumps over the barbed wire. She doesn’t quite make it and she tears
her udder. But that doesn’t faze her. She storms from one stretch of
fence to another. She never quite manages to hurdle the barbed wire.
And, as if she’s lost her mind, the cow, with her raggedy udder, doubles
back like a billy goat—while I, drenched, covered with shit, flounder­
ing calf-deep in the morass, with chattering teeth, curse her. Then I
have to find a place to take a dump myself.

Since I don’t have a compass, I run around in circles, right into the
German lines. They catch me, and I’m sentenced to death for deser­
tion. The firing squad is detailed. I’m to be shot tomorrow, at the
crack of dawn.
The soldier who’s assigned to guard me has the hots for me.
“What do you care?” he says. I say I don’t care.
When he drops his pants and tries to fuck me up the ass, I punch
him in the skull to daze him.
This time I escape in the right direction. At dawn I bump into the
patrol that I didn’t want to take part in. The corpses of the boys are
frozen iron-hard and contorted like dolls with movable limbs.
Drumfire. The Limeys must be preparing an attack. I lie in a shal­
low hole on the only approach route where they can attack. Every­
thing else around me is under water.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. . . The machine-gun fire zigzags across‘the
sand, which spurts up in tiny fountains.
46 Klaus K inski

Thick fog. You can barely see for thirty feet. I finally have to
stretch my legs. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! A tommy-gun volley. Five bullets
hit me. The guy standing in front of me fired only because he pan­
icked when I suddenly came out of the ground. Now I’m surrounded
by a whole bunch.
“C’mon! C’mon!” they say in English, skewering me with their
tommy guns. At least five are aiming at my head. Another at my heart.
At my belly. All that’s missing is one in my ass! When it finally dawns
on them that I’m not armed, they send me back to their own lines.
More and more Limeys emerge from the dense fog as I stagger
past them toward where they’re coming from.
My lower right arm swells up as big as my thigh. My head is bleed­
ing and so are both my arms and my chest. I throw away the jacket.
“Go on! Go on!” each soldier says when I show him my wounds
and try to get him to help me.
“Go on! Go back! Back!”
They simply have no time for me. They’ve got enough to do for
themselves. The air is polluted with whistling bullets and bursting
shrapnel, and the low-flying German aircraft are swimming around in
the air like sharks.
Nevertheless the Limeys walk upright. Their helmets are tilted
back. They’re probably tired of throwing themselves on the ground
and even of crouching. Some have a cigarette dangling from the cor­
ner of a mouth.
My pants are sliding down. My suspenders are ripped, and my
swollen, bleeding arms can’t hold my pants. My belly is bare; my kid’s
shirt doesn’t even reach down to my navel.
Behind the lines they shove me into a rowboat while they them­
selves wade hip-deep in the water. I’m so happy that I start singing,
weeping, laughing. . . . Slowly my head sinks down to my chest.
In a surgery tent they remove my bullets. When I wake up from
 Kinski Uncut 47

the ether, a military chaplain winks at me and places a small, thin

chocolate bar on my chest.
“He’s just a child,” he says, as if to himself. Then he lights a ciga­
rette and inserts it between my dry lips.
I’m loaded into a medical train. I don’t know where it’s heading. I
just keep my eyes glued to the wonderful tits, asses, and bellies of the
nurses in their tight uniform skirts as they keep panting along from
one moaning patient to the next.
Snowflakes are falling outside. It’s Christmas. Frost flowers are
back on the windows. Like when I was little and dreamed about glit­
tering Yule tides.
I’m handed pants, a jacket, a coat, and a pair of lace-up boots
without laces. No shirt. No underwear. No socks. No gloves. No caps.
“Take your hands out of your pockets or I’ll whip them out!” A
red-haired Scot with a ludicrous sea-dog beard waves his riding crop
in the air as he receives us at the entrance to a POW camp. I’m so riled
that I yell back:
“I’m not playing with my balls, you red rat! I’m cold!”
Another POW tugs at my sleeve and whispers: “Don’t let him get
to you. Take your hands out.”
I take my hands out although they’re frozen stiff.
After hours of being counted off we enter our cages with frozen
bones. The other POW tells me: “You’ll see, they’re not all like that.
On the average they’re okay.”
The brick-drying sheds, which are about twenty-five yards long,
are so low that we have to kneel down to crawl in. Once you’re inside,
you can’t straighten up. You have to crawl around. We sleep in two
rows on the cold, slimy earth. We lie so tight together that you have to
lift up your body if you want to turn over on your other side. And so
close together that our feet touch and we kick one another. Each man
has a thin military blanket to cover himself with, and that’s all.
48 Klaus K inski

Using our fingers we eat from old, rusty tin cans. Sauerkraut with
water every day, and a can of tea. I never realized there was so much
sauerkraut in the world.
Incredible the things that go on in the camp. Not only swapping,
robbing, loan-sharking, prostitution, and killing, but grown men
reciting poems, going from barrack to barrack, reading aloud from the
Bible (the devil only knows where they got it from!), reading palms,
telling fortunes, trying to “convert” one another to some kind of crap,
and fighting over the last ladle of sauerkraut.
Tobacco is the most important thing. Even more important than
fucking. The men pounce on one another insanely, beating each other
bloody over thrown-out tea leaves which have been steeped so often
that they’re totally tasteless. The leaves are dried and made into ciga­
rettes with newspapers, which we sometimes get for wiping our asses.
An old POW literally eats up a “genuine” English cigarette. Using a
rusty razor blade, he slices off a thinny-thin slice every day and luxuri­
ously devours it in its paper.
After a while we’re interrogated. They call this an interview. The
guy who cross-examines me is a Berliner. He gabs about his school
days, his high school, the street it was on, and so forth. Who cares?
He’s stuffed to the gills, and he lights one cigarette after another
without giving me even one. He’s probably never suffered any lack
and has always had enough to eat. Even now, in the midst of war, he’s
got everything. I’ve had nothing and I’ve got nothing now, not even
warm clothes in winter. I wish this whole gang would go to hell with
their loudspeakers, their yellow lines, and their eternal barbed wire.
After two months in the brickworks we’re supposed to be
shipped to England. On the way to the docks in Ostend, the people
along the road spit at us. Oh well, who cares?
 Kinski Uncut 49

While crossing the Channel, we’re torpedoed by German U-boats and

nearly go down. By the time we reach England and crawl out of our
cargo holds, the war is over. But they transport us to POW camps all
the same.
The camp latrines in Colchester, Essex, are where we all get to­
gether. The latrines are long, very deep ditches spanned by raw
beams, where you sit and shit. And during the shitting everything is
discussed, planned, and concocted. Everything is prepared here: bur­
glaries, escapes. Conspiracies develop here, and this is also the
marketplace for the sex hustlers: A fuck costs a piece of soap, tobac­
co, or cigarettes, depending on whether it’s the ass, the dick, the
mouth, or the hand. The prisoners make a lubricant out of mutton fat.
A young boy is fished dead out of the shit. Even though the war is
over, insane Nazis charged him with “high treason” and condemned
him to death on the latrine, and that was where he was executed.
They shoved him into the shit, where he suffocated.
Colchester is a transit camp for released prisoners from Canada
and the United States. They bring our first samples of Lux soap, blue
jeans, chewing gum, Camels, and Lucky Strikes.
Now it’s our camp’s turn, but transport home takes another year.
First the sick. I’m not sick. All night long I stand naked against the icy
barracks wall to get a kidney infection so there will be protein in my
urine for the examination. I wolf down a pack of cigarettes and hot
sardines in oil, and I drink my own piss so as to get a fever. There’s no
gimmick I don’t try. But to no avail.
“He stays,” says the asshole of a doctor. There’s nothing wrong
with me. I’m unkillable.
At last I manage to get into the final transport. I’ve spent one year
and four months in this zoo! Truck after truck lumbers out of the
barbed-wire dump.
“C’mon! C’mon!”
50 Klaus Kinski

If I had said I live in Berlin, I would have had to stay in the German re­
ception camp. For the time being, no one’s allowed into Berlin. I tell
them I’m from some provincial burg. Then I forge my release docu­
ment. Profession: newscaster! I don’t know how I ever hit on that per­
verse idea. I’ve never heard a newscast in my life.
I have an American haversack, blue jeans, a sleeveless shirt, a pair
of shoelaces, two cakes of Lux soap, a tin of Goldflag tobacco, and
seven marks to my name.
I sell a cake of soap on the black market and keep moving, always
zigzagging. I sleep in bunkers or bushes.
In a railroad station a girl with curly hair flashes a smile at me.
She’s already in the compartment. I join her. During the ride we chew
each other’s tongues up. We go to the john and I put her on the com­
mode. I don’t even pull down her panties, I just yank them aside. Her
hole is warm and wet, like the mouth of a cow.
We get out of Heidelberg.
She lives in a pretty garret near American HQ, where she carried on
with everyone. The Yanks pay with food, coffee, chocolate, cigarettes,
liquor, and cash. And, of course, with soap, nylons, and toilet paper.
Toward morning, when the girl, with her lipstick smeared, climbs
into bed with me, the fucking really gets going. She’s only sixteen, but
she knows the most diverse positions, and she teaches me all of them.
I’ve never lived this well.
We fuck for three or four hours. After breakfast I take a walk and let
her sleep till noon. Then we have lunch, and she goes back to the Yanks.
After six weeks I’m fed up. While she’s off with a client, I grab my
haversack and split.
The trains are so mobbed that people are spilling out of doors and
windows. I bore my way into the human tangle and for the entire trip I
 Kinski Uncut 51

hang head-down in the compartment while my legs stick out through

the window.
Stuttgart. Kassel. Karlsruhe. I don’t have the foggiest notion
where they are. In every town I reach, I borrow from the theater direc­
tors. Some give me more, some less. Some give me cigarettes.
In Tübingen I send a telegram to Berlin. I put down the Tübin­
gen theater as my address. My mother’s sure to respond immediately.
Maybe she’ll send me a little money or some candy—the way she sent
them to me in a vacation home. At that time she sent me “spring
leaves”: These are green leaves, like on trees, but made of candy
sugar. They don’t cost much, and they always stick together in
clumps inside the bag. But I love eating them, and my mother’s love
stuck to them too.
I stroll a lot, warbling to myself. I haven’t got a care in the world
and I’ll soon be with my mom. I’ve got food and tobacco, and at night
I sleep in the parks.
The secretary at the theater schedules an audition for me. During
lunch break we go to the park and I show her where I sleep. The bed,
made of leaves, is still there from last night. Dense bushes protect us
from the eyes of passersby, but I have to clap my hand over her
mouth, because she shrieks out at every thrust as if she were being
skewered. Her underwear is soaked with blood. Her hymen was so
tough that I had to smash in brutally.
Even though I’ve been out in the street for a long while, I keep
rereading Arne’s wire: “Mother not alive stop Know nothing about
the others.”

I don’t cry. I see everything in gaudy, shattered splinters, like a kid

peering through a kaleidoscope. You had to shake the tube so that
the glass splinters froze into a different, exotic pattern. I don’t see the
52 Klaus Kinski

people coming toward me; I run into them. I don’t see the cars either.
Only the multicolored splinters that keep changing their crystal pat­
terns, which are never repeated. I dash about aimlessly. It’s only to­
ward morning that I go to the park and lie facedown on the earth. I
wanted to buy her a winter coat and mittens and warm shoes for her
frostbite, and genuine coffee from beans, and rolls with butter and real
honey. And it was all meant to be a surprise.

This morning I audition for the part of Melchtal in Schiller’s William

Tell. When I come to the words “Into the eyes, you say? Into the
eyes . . . ?” I think of my mother’s eyes, and my tears prevent me from
going on. Then I yell: “The day will brightly dawn within your
night!” I dash off the stage and out of the theater.
The secretary catches up with me in the street and tells me I’ve
been offered a contract. I go back with her, sign the thing, take an ad­
vance of fifty marks, and split forever.
I join a wandering troupe. They do operettas and I have to sing. I
don’t give a damn so long as it brings me closer to Berlin. I can’t be­
lieve my brother’s telegram. I can’t believe my mother is dead.
The troupe director’s wife is very young. She has rosy raspberry
lips that have been crushed with kisses and she has deep rings under
her black cherry eyes. I’m gonna screw her no matter what it takes.
We act in taverns and meeting halls. The stuff we put on is not to
be described. To top off all the stupidity we’re to mount Charley’s
Aunt.
We travel in open trucks and sit on cast-iron garden chairs. I
curse this brood, but we’re heading north. In one village they even let
us perform in the lousy theater.
 Kinski Uncut 53

The Offenburg park is thronged. But I have to memorize my idiotic

part in Charley’s Aunt somewhere. I’ll go bananas if I remain in the
stall where I’m billeted.
In the bright sunshine a Moroccan soldier is sitting on a bench.
He grins at me with his yellow tooth stumps and points to his fly
while brandishing a pack of cigarettes in his other hand. Then he
motions toward some bushes behind him. He repeats his pan­
tomime quite unabashed: fly, cigarettes, bushes. The guy must
have a screw loose. He expects me go join him in those scrawny
bushes? In the middle of the flower beds with everyone trudging
by? Besides, he’s sure to have syphilis. And then those yellow
Gauloises he’s holding are totally unsmokable. They’re made espe­
cially for the Foreign Legion. You can’t get beyond the first drag, it
explodes in your lungs like a hand grenade. Who the hell does he
think he is?
On Sundays we do two of those vile performances. I’ve already
got one behind me, and so I rip off big, fleshy cherries on the highway
outside the village tavern where we’re performing.
Next to me a Moroccan soldier is also pilfering cherries. When he
sees me grab a fully laden branch, he tries to yank it from my hand. I
kick him in the butt. He pounces on me and, holding out his rifle, he
drives me into the barracks across the road.
A moment later I’m surrounded by a gang of Moroccans. I don’t
get what they’re jabbering but they gesticulate like ogres and threaten
me with their bayonets. A couple of them are feeling up my fly. They
seem to lust especially for blond boys.
A ghastly trumpet blare summons the horde to roll call. That’s my
salvation. They shove and kick me through the barracks gates. The
sentry draws his rifle bolt. I very clearly hear the bolt snap in. The car­
tridge is now in the barrel. He aims at me.
“Get the hell outa here and go fuck yourself!”
54 K laus K inski

I’ve never run so fast in my life.

The director and his young wife spend the night at the inn where
we’ve been doing our repulsive performances for two weeks now.
During the day we rehearse Charley’s Aunt in the meeting hall.
I’ve got at least two hours to kill until I’m on with rny shit. So I go
take a leak. The toilet is one flight up.
To get there I have to walk past the double room where the direc­
tor and his young wife sleep. And where they fuck, even in the day­
time, during lunch break, before and after the performances, nonstop.
It’s ten A.M. Her door is open. The room’s untidy. I listen to make
sure no one’s coming; then I enter the room. The bed’s a mess. The
sheet’s covered with stains. Some are quite fresh, still damp and
creamy. I get a hard-on. When I turn around, she’s standing behind me.
“What do you want?”
“The same as you.”
“What do I want?”
“To fuck.”
“You creep!”
Her face turns crimson. Her raspberry lips turn dark red. Her
eyes get a silvery glow. She breathes heavily.
I take a used handkerchief and put it over the keyhole. In the mir­
ror above the wash basin I see her yanking up her skirt. She pulls off
her panties and stands before me with open legs, protruding pelvis,
and slighdy bent knees. Her rough, swollen tongue fills my mouth.
Her belly pushed against my dick as if she were knocked up. She
moans. Her abdomen works like a machine. She shpritzes and
shpritzes. Our knees buckle. I shove my dick into her from behind,
right up to my nuts, and I writhe as if I were touching a high-voltage
line—while she, impaled, and with her tongue hanging out, ratdes like
a slaughtered calf.
Her husband won’t pay me an advance. We’re out in the street,
 Kinski Uncut 55

and I punch him in the nose. Once again there’s a Moroccan soldier—
he drives us apart with his bayonet.
I skip town before dark, after stuffing my tux into my haversack. I
tell no one I’m splitting. When the evening performance gets going
they’ll notice I’m gone.
The only trains heading for Berlin are freight. I have to buy a
ticket for the next one-horse town so I can get through the barrier.
When it’s dark I’ll run across the tracks. The freight train for Berlin
arrives at six A.M.
Everyone who passes the military barrier is frisked. A woman is
carrying a bottle of milk for the infant she’s holding in her arm. The
French sentry smashes the bottle on the station platform. This thug
won’t smash anything of mine. I’ve got nothing but my haversack and
my tux. I’ve also wedged a pack of cigarettes between my ass cheeks.
I hide out till morning in the brakeman’s booth of a sidetracked
train car. I chain-smoke to avoid falling asleep. My freight train will
stop only briefly to hitch on a few cars. I don’t dare oversleep.
I make it as far as Frankfurt. The train stays put. I was misin­
formed.

I sleep in an air-raid bunker. A short, plump girl is also lying on a cot.

We go outdoors—too many snoopy eyes in the bunker.
I have to wait days on end for a freight train that’s going to Berlin.
At the freight station in Berlin I take the urban rail to Schöneberg.
From there I hike the two and a half miles to our place.
A couple of firebombs have smoked out the back wing. But our
apartment has survived. Except for the shattered window panes and
the charred frames.
Arne tells me how our mother died. He heard it from a woman who
was with her when it happened. Low-flying American airplanes shot
56 Klaus Kinski

my mother in the belly. As she bled to death in the gutter, she smoked a
cigarette and worried about us kids. Then she was buried somewhere
or other. The woman couldn’t say where because parachute mines
were coming down, and she had to get into the air-raid cellar.
No one knows anything about my father. He remains among the
vanished. Achim hopes he’s in a Russian POW camp. Inge has writ­
ten from Schliersee.
I’m even hungrier than in my childhood. It’s impossible to dig up
any food if you don’t have jewels or whatnot, or get involved in some
racket. We trudge from farmer to farmer, twenty or thirty miles on
foot, trying to get potatoes or turnips which they feed to their pigs.
But the farmers want jewelry or genuine Persian rugs.
After running around I’m so wiped out that I fall asleep on the ur­
ban train. When I wake up, a plastered G.I. is babbling away at me.
Some sort of bullshit about “you German . . . You were . . . Boom,
boom . . . No good . . . No boom, boom.” I ought to yell into that mo­
ron’s drunken face that it was American pilots who killed my mother!
They shot her in the belly! In the womb! The womb she carried me in
and from which she gave birth to me! But I don’t know any English.
All I know how to say is, “Fuck you!”

Arne tells me he’s gotten an ax. He wants to hide behind a tree in the
park, wait for a passerby, and mug him, because he’s totally at the end
of his rope. He trembles like an aspen leaf.

A week later I realize I’ve caught my first dose of the clap. Who knows
from whom? I’m gonna have to get used to this from now on.
I audition at Berlin’s Schlossparktheater. I lie brazenly, claiming
I’ve played Hamlet, whereas I’ve never even read or seen the play.
 Kinski Uncut 57

I don’t know whether anyone believes me. Barlog hires me after

my first audition.
I debut as the page in the prologue of The Taming of the Shrew.
The page has nothing to do but wear drag and hold on to the drunken
tinker so he can watch the show from a box. During those stupid two
hours the page has to grab the liquor bottle from his hands the instant
the tinker tries to drink. Naturally this is not real booze, not even
rotgut, just some sort of warm stuff. A piss drink. Not even Coke.
After a whole month I’m fed up. I pour booze into the bottle.
Whenever I grab it away from the tinker, I take a deep swallow. By
Act III, I’m totally bombed. . . . I start grinning from ear to ear, slurp­
ing from the bottle and reeling around the stage—and I step into the
stupid prompter’s box. Curtain.
Backstage, Barlog confronts me, so I hurl the empty bottle at him.
At five A.M. I wake up on a bench near the Zoo subway station. I
don’t know how I got here. Someone is groping me. I shove him
away. The old people say that this is the worst winter in decades. The
mercury plummets to fifteen below, I still don’t have a coat, and Bar-
log doesn’t seem to give a damn. Like all the lousy actors he’s always
nicely wrapped up, and he’s always got a huge thermos bottle and
sandwiches. He gets the best ration book, No. 1. I get the worst,
No. 3. I can’t spend the night at home anymore. We cover ourselves
with rags, newsprint, and cardboard, and wind strips of cloth around
our hands, feet, and heads. We still have no windowpanes; the icy
wind whistles into the room day and night, the snow falls into our
beds and our faces.
Tonight, when I take the unheated trolley to the theater, I cry. It’s
not my poverty I’m crying about, and not the pain caused by the lump
of ice that went through the hole in my shoe sole. It’s my fury at that
theater riffraff. The starvation wages that Barlog pays me. Not enough
even to buy a little food.
58 Klaus Kinski

After each performance I hide in the heated theater and sleep on

two chairs in the wardrobe. The janitor doesn’t fink on me. But when
Barlog finds out about it from some shithead, I’m strictly ordered not
to do it anymore.
I take along food from home. Barley porridge. I cook enough for
several days in advance. After a couple of hours the porridge gets as stiff
as bread. Every day before heading out to the theater I cut off a slice of
ice-cold porridge, wrap it in newspaper, and stick it inside my shirt.
Since I have no rehearsals, I don’t know where to spend my days.
I’m not tolerated anywhere for long.
So-called “warmth halls” have been set up in every neighbor­
hood, and here people can huddle around iron stoves. In their homes
they die like flies.
These “warmth halls” are no bigger than normal rooms—at best,
they’re the size of a tavern. They’re always mobbed. The overseer
makes sure that nobody outstays his welcome. So I have to commute
from one warmth hall to the next. The distances are huge, and I draw
up a precise schedule. Once I get into a warmth hall, I remove the
frozen rags that are wrapped around my head and hands as if I were a
leper, and I place those rags on the stove until they almost burn up.
Then I put on my “clothes” again and race, cringing, to the next
warmth hall. I can’t do it at one fell swoop. Every hundred yards I
have to look out for a way station—a building entrance, a covered
driveway, a basement entrance, a subway staircase—in order to shield
myself against the relentless cold.
Hygiene is catastrophic. In our apartment I can’t even wash,
much less take a bath. Wood and coal are nowhere to be found. The
pipes in the toilet and the kitchen are frozen. Even the razor is frozen
fast. I wash wherever I can—at the theater, in public rest rooms.
 Kinski Uncut 59

The worst of the cold is past, and the sun is timidly peeping out. Only
now, after I’ve been asking him all winter long, does Barlog have
someone tailor an American army blanket into a coat for me.
The coat is never completed. The costume designer who’s mak­
ing this coat monster for me claims I grabbed her pussy in the cos­
tume room.
When Barlog refuses to cast me as the lead in Ah, Wilderness! I
smash the windowpanes of the Schlossparktheater. My one-year con­
tract is not renewed. But I would have lost my mind anyway and
starved to death among these barnstormers.

From now on I just wander around. I eat and sleep wherever I can.
The main thing is to avoid dying of cold or hunger and to put my head
somewhere or other, preferably between a girl’s legs. Once it turns
warmer I’ll sleep in bushes again.
Meanwhile I’ve learned that there’s such a thing as acting schools.
I use them to steal books, and normally I also steal a girl into the bar­
gain. Besides, the acting schools are always heated, and the girls al­
ways have sandwiches or an apple or a hardboiled egg.
What they teach in these acting schools is incredible, hair-raising
crap. The Actors Studio in America is supposed to be the worst.
There the students learn how to be natural—that is, they flop around,
pick their noses, scratch their balls. This bullshit is known as
“method acting.” How can you “teach” someone to be an actor? How
can you teach someone how and what to feel and how to express it?
How can someone teach me how to laugh or cry? How to be glad and
how to be sad? What pain is, or despair or happiness? What poverty
and hunger are? What hate and love are? What desire is, and fulfill­
ment? No, I don’t want to waste my time with these arrogant morons.
Books and girls, yes. These girls are very young. The youngest is
60 Klaus Kinski

thirteen. The oldest sixteen and a half. She’s a slut, but she’s hard at
work studying acting, and she gets food and whole cartons of ciga­
rettes from the Yanks. She’s had syphilis, but says she’s been cured.
She’s very sweet, but a boring beanpole. I fuck her just once, on a
steep slope over the railroad tracks near Halensee Station.
As for the very young one, I devirginize her at her home. She lives
with her mother in a small apartment near Treptower Park. I believe
her parents are divorced, but I’m never sure. I meet only her mother.
She leaves us alone in the parlor all afternoon because I tell her I want
to rehearse the bed scene from Romeo and Juliet with her daughter.
When the girl strips naked and pulls on only her transparent nightie,
the mother plays safe and leaves the apartment.
Once she’s gone, we rehearse the scene on the parents’ double
bed. But the mattress is too soft. We need something that doesn’t
yield, that offers resistance—otherwise I won’t be able to penetrate her
closed-up cunt. We lie down on the hard sofa. It’s the right stuff, but I
can’t manage to penetrate her no matter how spread-out she lies. I
pull her off the sofa, turn her on her belly, pull her up on her knees,
and force down her head, so that her face is on the floor and she can
hold tight to the legs of the sofa. Then I bore my fist into her back,
hollowing it, so that her ass sticks up. But I can’t drill her even from
behind. She’s incredibly tight. The stiff little wads of her vaginal lips
keep springing together like two halves of a rubber ball.
And now she has to piss in the bargain! She can’t even make it to
the door—she stands there, pissing wide-legged on the floor. Her piss
pelts downs like a cloudburst. I yank her back on her knees and shove
it in. I explode deep inside her.

For a short time Ulrike K.’s acting school becomes my refuge. That is,
the apartment she shares with Agnes, her adopted daughter. She
 Kinski Uncut 61

doesn’t expect me to endure the garbage of acting classes. She simply

takes me in, shares everything with me. Food, drink, a little cash, and
the mattresses. In any case, Agnes gets into my bed every night.
The first I see of Agnes is a nude in red chalk; it’s on the wall of
the waiting room in the school. I get a boner. Everything on this body
shines like marble. The butt. The boobs. The small, round belly.
The convex pussy.
Usually I don’t get back from my scouting expeditions until the
night. I climb through the bedroom window, which she keeps open for
me as if I were a cat. I crawl right into bed with her and warm up on her
hard butt. But before I get warm, my dick stands up like a hammer, and
we toss away the covers. Her body stiffens and writhes nonstop and
quakes and twitches. We go through all positions, even up her ass,
and everything oral. I feel her orgasms like electric pulsations, while I
grow deeper and deeper into her like a root. When she’s drained me
dry, brimming over with me and so feeble that she can’t even scream, I
jump back out through the window and run through the starry night.
My body, my hands, my face are more fragrant than the blossoms on
the bushes where I lie down to sleep with my face toward the sky.

Prince Sasha Kropotkin is a gangster. In the daytime he deals in an­

tique furniture and jewels, buying the very last spoons from old
grannies. He takes anything—earrings, amulets, gold fittings of family
albums, photo frames, even gold teeth. Anything, so long as it’s gold.
He scratches it slightly and drips some acid on the scratch, and he
can instantly tell the karat figure. His biggest profit comes from Rus­
sian icons.
He fritters his nights away with male hustlers, who rob him blind.
Once, a boy even banged his mother on the head, trying to clean out
the apartment.
6 2 Klaus K inski

Tonight, as usual, Sasha is hanging out in a bar with a boy, gaping

at him with his glassy eyes as if the kid were a priceless icon. Mean­
while Sasha is getting plastered on vodka. He’s very rich and always
treats everyone. Until Gustl snaps and barks, cutting down the hustler
with her snotty tongue and pushing Sasha into a cab. She takes me
along, too.
Gustl is a beautiful woman in her late twenties. She got it into her
head to marry a Russian prince, Sasha Kropotkin, and become
Princess Kropotkin, because she’s got a thing about nobility. But
otherwise, lots of men have fucked her. She sponges off Sasha and
other fat cats, getting her hands on whatever she can. She likewise
deals in antique furniture, which she buys from a dead man’s sur­
vivors in the very room he’s just died in. The heirs want to take the
cash straight to the black market and buy a lump of butter, eggs, milk,
and meat. She deals in worm-eaten crosses, patens, tabernacles, and
icons—even confessionals that she steals from bombed-out churches,
headstones from torn-up cemeteries. She buys and sells jewelry for
Sasha, on consignment, and she pockets a commission for the boys
she gets him. She administers Sasha’s fortune in her head, and at every
hour of the day and night she reminds him that when he was crocked
he promised to marry her. This, in Gustl’s view, means he has to pay
all her bills. Sometimes Sasha beats her up. Once he even broke one of
her fingers, and it never healed properly. She talks about it to every­
body, holding up her crooked digit. Most people laugh. But Gustl is
cunning. She doesn’t mind being laughed at if she can arouse pity.
She’s always cheerful by nature; this, she says, is due to the fact that
she was born in the Rhineland. She never holds a grudge, even after the
heartbreaking tragedy that she plays at least once a day with Sasha.
She takes me along to fuck. I promptly shack up with her. She
buys me a toothbrush and a razor and a minimal wardrobe—she even
orders a custom-made suit for me; it’s made of the finest English wool.
 Kinski Uncut 63

Then she drags me along to all sorts of parties and to other hookers in
order to show me off. She feeds me nutritious first-class food, even
cooks wonderful delicacies, and buys pounds and pounds of meat at
exorbitant prices. And she squooshes my balls dry like an orange
squeezer. If there are any tricks or positions I don’t know, she teaches
them to me. She also tells me a lot about other men. Hans A. had her
suck him off—but she wasn’t allowed to swallow his come, she had to
give it back mouth-to-mouth. He wanted to swallow it himself. Gustl
is a fabulous whore, and I’m in good hands here.
But eventually she gets on my nerves, and so I see her only occa­
sionally, at Sasha’s place.
The Kropotkins are one of those White Russian families that
managed to get out in time with their stuff, and no matter what nook
or cranny on this planet they may be in, they’re eternally scared of the
Bolsheviks. Sasha and his mother got stranded in Berlin, and he is al­
ways scared of being kidnapped by the KGB. His apartment, which is
stuffed with priceless antiques and whose walls are jampacked with
Russian icons, is equipped with steel doors and heavy window gates,
like a penitentiary. This floor-through, which runs around an en­
tire street corner, from Uhlandstrasse to the Kurfurstendamm, is a
meeting place for black marketeers, aristocrats, high-fashion design­
ers, thieves, whores, hustlers, artists, murderers, and top-ranking
French, British, American, and even Soviet occupation officers.
Sasha truly loves me. He surely also loves my face, my body,
and my Slavic soul. Above all, he loves me because I tell the truth
and don’t rob him. His confidence in me is unlimited: He leaves me
alone in the apartment with diamonds and pearl necklaces. I can eat
here and spend the night whenever I feel like it. His queer butler
has orders to let me in at any hour of the day or night—but Sasha
never gives me money. Nor does he ever pay me a commission.
When I tell him I want to deal on the black market, he laughs at me.
64 Klaus Kinski

Instead he tells me about Russia. About Dostoevsky and Tolstoy,

about Tchaikovsky and Nijinsky. He plays Russian records for
me, and he weeps the way Russians do when they listen to their
music. And like the Russians in the novels of Tolstoy and Dosto­
evsky, he gets bombed out of his mind and confesses all the nasty,
filthy things he does, and he then begs me for redemption. He
should worry!

Sasha takes me along to the Paris-Bar. I dance with a Polish cunt. She
works as a stripper at a nearby club and lives in a rooming house on
the corner. I reach into Sasha’s trouser pocket and fish out whatever I
need for the Pole.
The Polish cunt must have a magic technique. My dick stays hard
nonstop even after I’ve shot a couple of times. After every fuck she
pushes out my boner, rolls over, and dozes off. There’s no way I can
sleep; I wait with my trigger-happy cock until her big ass squeezes to­
ward me—that’s the signal. She’s gotta have it six or seven times a
night. She barely talks, only when it’s absolutely necessary. Besides, I
don’t understand her gobbledygook.

It might look as if all I do is loll around in beds and fuck. No way.

Frequently I isolate myself from everybody for weeks on end, lock
myself in my room, and don’t even go outdoors. During such periods
I do language exercises ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. Or
all night long. If the neighbors complain—and they always do—I
have to leave whatever room I’m in. I change rooms more often than
girls. Sometimes I have to leave a room the very same day I get it.
I spend days strolling through the parks, nights walking the
streets. Barely conscious of what’s going on around me, I recite some
 Kinski Uncut 65

text or other. If I get tired during my language exercises or I don’t

think I can reach my quota, I slap my face. I just have to make it! I’ll
show them!
Alfred Braun, the former star reporter of Berlin Radio, casts me in
Romeo and Juliet. With my pay I rent the first studio of my own. It’s
really just a laundry room on the top floor of a building. But it has a
large studio window with light flooding through it. I paint the place
white and scrub the floor. I have a bed, a table, a chair, and my own
toilet, where I wash myself with cold water under the faucet. That’s all
I need. What meager laundry I have I do myself. At night I don’t sleep
on my bed; instead I walk through the parks, and when I can’t walk
anymore I lie down on the bare ground and peer at the sky. When day
finally breaks, like a long-awaited birth, I go back to my studio and lie
down fully dressed on my bed. I don’t need much sleep, just three or
four hours.

Jean Cocteau’s La Machine à Écrire (“The Typewriter”). In one

scene I have to have an epileptic fit. The director has never witnessed
one. Neither have I. That’s why I go to the hospital and ask the head
of the psychiatric division to describe an epileptic attack. He wants
me to watch a patient getting shock therapy. The reactions, he says,
are the same as in an epileptic fit: When the patient is electrified by the
heavy current, her body writhes and convulses. Her teeth suddenly
bang so hard that they would shatter if it weren’t for the piece of gar­
den hose between the two rows.
She foams at the mouth. Her eyes pop.
The patient is wheeled into the treatment room. She’s very
young and beautiful. But her face and body are as gray as a street.
All she has on is a hospital gown. She sits up halfway, but doesn’t
seem interested in her surroundings, she just stammers softly and
6 6 Klaus K inski

unintelligibly. The doctor says that the girl was ditched by her
boyfriend, and the trauma was so great that she lost her mind.
They’re using shock therapy to trigger a countershock, which may
help her if everything works out.
“What if it doesn’t work out?” I ask.
“Then she’s out of luck,” says the doctor coldbloodedly.
The girl is strapped to the bed. The electrodes are applied. On
her arms, her feet, her temples. Like in an electric chair. A piece of
chewed-up garden hose is wedged between her teeth. The power is
switched on. Jerking dreadfully, she opens her legs wide, simultane­
ously yanking them in, so that her gown rides up and I can see her
open vagina. Her abdomen rears as raunchily as if she were shrieking
after love and not after an electric shock. Then her legs lurch forward,
as if she were kicking something. I turn and leave the room.
I succeed in performing the epileptic seizure on stage. But I keep
seeing the girl. Her abdomen exposing her secret, which was not
meant for me. Every woman’s magic secret.

Edith E. plays opposite me in La Machine à Écrire. After perform­

ing we often hang together all night. Sometimes I visit her in her
apartment in Westend during the day. Though she’s fifty, she’s
never had a man in all her life. Initially I satisfy her with my tongue.
Soon I get her to the point of letting me fuck her with my dick. The
entrance to her vagina is as tiny as the slit in a piggy bank in which
you can only insert pennies, and she gets agonizing pains. Neverthe­
less she squeezes my pecker greedily and she doesn’t want me to
stop plugging her.
All her life she’s licked girls and women and all her life she’s only
let girls and women lick her—at school, in the girls’ boarding school,
and later as an adult. She tells me about passionate muff-diving feasts.
 Kinski Uncut 67

About her first touches. About the teacher who first seduced
her. About a nurse who brutally raped her, who controlled her com­
pletely, whom she hated yet was in complete bondage to, and who
eventually committed suicide because Edith managed to dump her.
She tells me about romantic, dreamy women who were like herself,
like little girls, crawling under the blanket because they’re scared. She
tells me about the uninhibited obsession of a Catholic nun who left the
order for her sake. And about her own sister, who was her idol. And
she tells me about her relationship with Marlene D. when they were
both just starting out. Marlene tore down Edith’s panties backstage in
a Berlin theater and, using just her mouth, brought Edith to orgasm.

Jürgen Fehling, the only living genius among stage directors, calls me
in. I audition for him. Seven hours straight! It’s six P.M. The staff is al­
ready arriving at the Hebbel Theater to prepare for the evening show.
Fehling has a young usherette to do the death scene in Othello with me.
“Just keep your trap shut,” he tells the flabbergasted girl, “no
matter what Kinski does to you, you just stay as motionless as a bump
on a log, don’t let out a peep. I want to hear nothing but his voice.”
What does he mean, “No matter what Kinski does to you?” What can
I do to her here anyway?
I hate this guy. I’d rather fuck the usherette, whose panties smell
so intoxicating that my nuts ache. Seven hours aren’t enough for him!
He must be wacko.
We have to break. He has me read to him from a phone book in a
dressing room. I read and read and make him laugh and cry.
From then on Fehling never lets me out of his clutches. I accom­
pany him for weeks on end, watching his rehearsals, eating with him,
and spending whole nights in bars with him. He talks and talks, and
sometimes I’m so tired that I slump over with my face in a plate of food.
68 Klaus K inski

Fehling is to become artistic director of the Hebbel Theater.

“When I take over, I’m gonna save on everything—sets, cos­
tumes, and especially those foul-smelling officials, and all the other
stuff.” He grows angrier and angrier as we sit in a corner of a dive.
“But I’m not gonna save on my actors’ salaries. They’ll get everything
they need. Everything. Then I’ll demand everything from them, and
they’ll have the strength to give me everything!”
Otto Graf wants to cast me as Oswald in Ibsen’s Ghosts. I sign the
contract, getting an advance of five hundred marks. When I tell
Fehling, he replies:
“You’re not ready to do Oswald. That’s gonna be a high C for
you. You have to break the contract. I, Fehling, will defend you in
court. Never forget: The Good Lord has plans for you! And I’m
gonna make something of you! If you’re gonna do Oswald, then only
under my direction. Never for anyone else. Above all, you should
never work with Gründgens. That pissoir slut is an ignoramus. He
claims there’s no such thing as feelings. Because he has none himself.
If you need money, tell me, I’ll give you money.”
“No thanks. I’ve still got some.”
It hits me that I shouldn’t have said that. Have I gone bananas,
turning down money?
“Fine,” he says. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll always be
here for you. I’ll protect you.”
I’m so convinced by what he’s said that I go to Otto and repeat it
verbatim. I also tell him that I want to get out of my contract. Otto is
very crestfallen. But he’s scared of Fehling and doesn’t dare contra­
dict him.
“Then I won’t do Ghosts” he says.
The next morning Otto takes a final stab. He wants to go to
Fehling with me and ask him to release me.
Fehling tells me to wait in the next room while he talks to Otto.
 Kinski Uncut 69

He’s very charming to him. But he makes it clear that Otto should
keep his hands off me. I eavesdrop at the door and hear every word.
“You’ll only destroy him,” says Fehling to Otto. “But I can turn
him into the greatest actor of the twentieth century!”
Fehling tells me that I’m the first actor he’ll hire as soon as he
takes office at the Hebbel Theater.
The chief of the American Military Police in Berlin (I met him
through Sasha) gets me a ticket for an American army plane to Mu­
nich. From there I take the train to Schliersee, where Inge lives. She’s
married a lumbeijack. I feel as if Paul Bunyan were standing in front of
me when, shouldering his ax, he crushes my hand in his viselike grip.
Since neither I nor they have money and we have to sleep in the
same room, I’m forced to hear their fucking, which they indulge in as
shamelessly as if I weren’t even there. “How randy she is,” I think,
“she can’t even control herself for one night.” Or maybe she’s doing it
deliberately to remind me of what we did together. In any case, she
keeps moaning and coming until dawn, and all I can do is jerk off un­
der my blanket.
By the time I get back to Berlin, Fehling has become artistic direc­
tor of the Hebbel Theater but has then been instantly tossed out on
his ear after announcing that he first wants to do a movie in which he
himself plays God. After his lecture at the university, students throw
rocks at him, making his head bleed. He then vanishes.
I go to Otto and promise to do Oswald. I need money. Mrs. Al-
ving is played by Maria Schanda. After the scene in which Oswald
loses his marbles, she holds me in her arms for a long time because
she’s worried about me.
Before the premiere Otto gives me some cocaine because my
throat is so hoarse that I can barely speak. After I inhale some of the
white powder through my nostrils, my air passages and vocal chords
are magically liberated. But the coke dries out my mucous membranes;
70 Klaus K inski

my tongue grows heavy and fails to obey me, while I have the delusion
that I can speak trippingly and feel so powerful that I can tear out trees.
At the performance everything goes well. Spectators shriek dur­
ing the mad scene. A few dash out of the theater. One woman faints.
Otto shouldn’t have given me the coke. He also left me with a pouch
containing one gram. After using up half of it, I ask around, trying to find
a dealer. I’ve spent a week’s salary on one gram and snorted it up when it
strikes me that I’ve no appetite anymore. I haven’t eaten for days. In­
stead 1lick the last few crumbs from the paper the coke is wrapped in.
I order a meal in a restaurant. Upon handing me the bill, the
waiter gapes at me, dumbfounded. The full plates lie there un­
touched. I’ve pushed away the soup, the entree, and the dessert, and
done nothing but chain-smoke. I haven’t even realized what I’ve been
doing. When I see my face in the bathroom mirror, I know there’ll be
no escape if I don’t stop cold turkey.
Ghosts day after day. Even in broiling heat. Even Saturday mati­
nee. Even Sunday morning. A girl brings me the first sunflowers.
A newspaperwoman wants to interview me. She’s deliberately left
the top button of her blouse unbuttoned and she’s not wearing a bra.
Her pearlike tits bounce wildly with every step she takes in her high
heels; they almost hop into my face. I keep looking at them. Her body
is young and lithe, and yet so tense that I get the impression that if her
tight skirt didn’t cage her in, her thighs would spring apart like a
switchblade, and her bodacious butt cheeks, which fit nicely into a
male hand, would burst like chestnuts from their shells. Her beautiful,
narrow mouth is almost too small for the strong, white teeth that keep
the lips apart. She never even looks at me with her light-gray eyes. But
I know that this interview will last for a long time.
Forty minutes later we’re alone in her apartment on Reichskanz­
lerplatz. She stretches out on the bed, fully dressed. She lies very
quiet, still not looking at me. She stands up again, lights one cigarette
 Kinski Uncut 71

after another. She vanishes into the john for a long time. She fixes cof­
fee and sandwiches. She lies back down on the bed. She smokes like a
chimney. She doesn’t say a word when I lie down next to her.
But whenever I so much as touch her, she flinches in terror. After two
hours of this torture, I rip off her blouse at one swoop, and the pear tits
lose control. They actually do a Saint Vitus’s dance and shove their way
into my mouth. We yank at our clothes, stumble, fall on the floor, gasp,
yelp, shriek as if our lives depended on our getting rid of our clothes.
By the time we’re naked, we’re both crouching like two beasts
about to pounce on each other. Then we do pounce, we dig our teeth
into each other. We hit each other on the body. The face. The
breasts. The genitals. Attack each other more and more violently.
Sink our teeth in more and more painfully.
She pushes her abdomen up to my mouth as if performing a gym­
nastic bridge. She does a belly landing. Stretches her butt in the air. The
cheeks gape apart, opening up her asshole and the gullet of her raven­
ous pussy—which snaps at my writhing eel like a feeding predator.
Sixteen hours later, when I leave her apartment at seven A.M.,

there’s nothing we haven’t done.

A short time afterward I read in the papers that she and her hus­
band have committed suicide.

Seven months ago, Wolfgang Langhoff, the artistic director of Max

Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater in East Berlin, refused to hire me. I even
had to wait for weeks before he saw me. When I finally auditioned,
shrieking at the top of my lungs, weeping my eyes out, and banging my
hands and arms bloody, Langhoff didn’t even listen. He wolfed down
sandwiches and rubbed a splotch of sugary tea from his tie.
Why are these lowdown directors always scared they’ll starve to
death in the theater?
72 K laus K inski

“Come back in a couple of years,” he says to me with his mouth

full. “Maybe something’ll work out. And eat. Eat, eat! You’re so
skinny that people are worried you’re gonna be shattered by your
emotional eruptions. So eat heartily.”
I should have smashed that jelly fish in his jelly belly. But
I thought to myself: “You’ll be crawling to me someday! And in a
couple of years you’re gonna kick the bucket anyway!”
He comes crawling earlier than I figured. After Ghosts his manag­
ing director sends me a polite letter, inviting me to come to the
Deutsches Theater.
LanghofF signs me up for one year at a monthly salary of three
thousand marks and says that when the season’s over I can decide
whether to renew my contract. Naturally, for a much higher salary.
The first play is Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. I’m Claudio.
He’s sentenced to death for deflowering a young girl without first
marrying her. (Me, of all guys!) In the dungeon cell he has visions of
his corpse being chewed up by worms.
It’s hard for me to picture the worms eating me. I never think
about death. I haven’t even really started living yet.
Nights, I sneak around cemeteries and enter tombs. The rusty
cast-iron portholes are heavy and I can barely open them. I squeeze
through. I lean against the canvas-covered coffins. I listen, trying to
catch something. I put my ear on graves and call the dead, who never
respond. I have to find the answer. But how?
At a performance everything works out on its own. I’ve solved the
mystery: You have to submit silently. Open up, let go. Let anything
penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That’s
the magic key! The text comes by itself, and its meaning shakes the
soul. Everything else is taken care of by the life one has to live without
sparing oneself. You mustn’t let scar tissue form on your wounds; you
have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a
 Kinski Uncut 73

marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price.
I become so sensitive that I can’t live under normal conditions. That’s
why the hours between performances are the worst.

I’m fed up with doing Measurefor Measure. I sniff around everywhere like
a puppy, trying to find something better. Eventually Bertolt Brecht wants
to meet me. I watch a rehearsal of Mother Courage with some cast changes.
This is the third month he’s been rehearsing this very same scene. He goes
through an actor’s every word, every motion, a thousand times. My mind
gets numb from so much stupidity. They must be illiterate!
When he asks me if I want to join his Berliner Ensemble, I try to
come up with a clever reply. But Brecht himself is clever enough and
reads my silence in his own way: “I myself would have to advise you
against it. I can do as I like here in East Germany, but I doubt if they
have the sense of humor they’d need for you.”
I wrack my brain, trying to figure out what I can do to avoid per­
forming each and every evening. I plunk down, fully dressed, in a tub
of ice-cold water and with dripping clothes I creep through the ruins
of the bombed-out section of Wartburgstrasse, where I remain lying
in the rubble until evening. I want to catch pneumonia. But I don’t
even get the sniffles. The Good Lord must really have something in
mind for me.

As a member of the Deutsches Theater I receive coupons for one meal

a day at the Theater Club. This club has been set up by the Russians
and is open to anyone working in opera, ballet, or theater. The restau­
rant has everything, including Crimean champagne and malossol
caviar. I don’t eat caviar or drink champagne because I can’t af­
ford them, but one day I indulge in a second meal. Lunch, and then
74 K laus K inski

another meal after the evening performance because I’m starving. I

promptly get a warning. The manager of the Deutsches Theater, who
always eats two meals a day there, saw me and reported me.
One week later that same manager refuses to give me an advance
on my salary.
You can get from the dressing rooms to the offices directly
through internal stairs and corridors. I’m already in costume for the
evening show, except for my long boots, when I grab the shithead’s
necktie and slap him until his bleating attracts other office employees.
Now Langhoff appears, too, and orders me to take off my costume, fir­
ing me on the spot. But I have no intention of removing my costume. I
storm into my dressing room to pull on my boots.
The boots are still at the cobbler’s. I can’t get in there because
Langhoff, the manager, and the other office workers, who follow me
like a string of geese, would block the way. So in stocking feet I go
downstairs to the lobby, the string of geese behind me.
The first few spectators are gathering at the evening box office. I
storm past them into the street. It’s filled with people heading toward
the theater. Here! The theater pub! The barkeep’s a friend of mine.
The joint is likewise crowded with people devouring a meatball or
having a drink before the performance.
The string of geese, headed by Langhoff, has used a different
stairway, which leads from the theater lobby directly into the bar. I
run right into their arms. They chase me over tables, chairs, cus­
tomers. I jump onto a table.
“If you want your costume back, here it is!”
I rip bits of the costume off my body. I chew it up into bits and
pieces.
“This is for you! And for you! Here! Eat it up if you like! No one
else’ll ever wear it after me!”
That rat of a manager suffers with every shred of cloth. I mince
 Kinski Uncut 75

the costume into such tiny scraps that it could never be patched to­
gether again. There’s no way they can stop me. I stand with my back
to the wall, and if anyone tries to get at me I’ll kick him in the head!
Then I’m naked! The barkeep throws a coat over me and tries to
calm me down, for I’m shrieking with fury and disgust at this rabble.
The string of geese goes away with their tatters.

After the business at the Deutsches Theater, I’m back on the street,
and so I go to Sasha. “Don’t give a fuck!” is all he says, and hands me
a vodka. That’s just like him. When another gangster ripped him off
by replacing a pearl necklace worth three hundred thousand marks
with a bunch of phony pearls, Sasha merely gulped down a vodka.
When I tell him about the ruckus at the Deutsches Theater, he laughs.
“Don’t let it get to you, and thank the Creator for your talent. Look
at me. I’d give anything to switch places with you. I’m forty-two years
old and all my life I’ve done nothing but suck out other people’s
blood, run after hustlers, let them rob me blind, and get looped under
my icons. Do you believe I enjoy this life? You’ve got every reason to
be happy! Someday people will cluster around you! They’ll have fist-
fights over you. You’re gonna get everything you want. Don’t worry
about people who threaten you. Hide your fists from them. They
can’t hold a candle to you. Go find a new studio, it’ll be on me. Or
sleep here and get fed. Or live in my apartment on Königsallee.”
I don’t move in with Sasha or to Königsallee. Instead I find a nice
studio on Brandenburgische Strasse.

Helga is the girl who brought me the first sunflowers in the theater.
Her parents ordered her not to come to me; her father is a Protestant
minister. But even though it takes forever for her to let me fuck her,
76 K laus K inski

she keeps returning every day. At last she allows me to place her on
the altar and sacrifice her hymen.
When her parents ground her, she marries a student. Now her
parents can’t order her around anymore. Every morning she slips into
my bed, remaining until the student comes home from campus, when
she has to cook him dinner.

I need sunflowers! I walk many miles, trying to find some. If they’re

fresh, I kiss their honey faces. If they’re dried, I put them on my win­
dowsill, where they continue glowing.
I saw a gigantic sunflower in a garden in Tempelhof. I can’t risk
stealing it, so I ask the owner to sell it to me. He lets me have it
for free.
I carry it by its light-green six-foot stem from Tempelhof to Bran-
denburgische Strasse. Its black, sticky face is framed by radiant yellow
petals, while I wear jeans as blue as cornflowers and a T-shirt as red as
poppy. I got both items from someone who has a friend in America.
Since it’s summer, I go barefoot.
It’s Sunday, and the streets are full of strollers. I try to escape
people by using side streets, for no matter where I go they all laugh at
me and my sunflower.
To avoid running this gauntlet, I break off the head of the sun­
flower, press its face to my chest like a baby’s, and jog on toward
Wilmersdorf.
I try to climb into a bus, but the conductor can’t help entertaining
the passengers with stupid remarks about me and my sunflower. They
roar with mirth. I leap off the moving bus.
The street becomes more and more unbearable. I’m so bewil­
dered and offended by the brutality and narrowmindedness of these
people who laugh at me and my sunflower that, surrounded by all
 Kinski Uncut 77

these pedestrians, I see no other solution than to tear the yellow sun­
flower head into pieces and run away.

Achim is home from a Russian POW camp and already locked up

again. He was part of a gang that ripped off fur coats. I visit him in the
Moabit remand prison, bringing him chocolate and cigarettes. He’s
ecstatic at seeing me again, and we hug and kiss. He begs me to get
him a lawyer.
On the way to the lawyer on Fasanenstrasse, I see a policewoman
dragging and shoving a weeping woman with a knapsack on her back.
Passersby gape but hold their tongues.
“What are you doing with her?” I ask the uniformed nanny goat.
“She sold stuff on the black market,” she replies.
“So what!” I retort. “Aren’t you ashamed, you female Cossack,
arresting this poor woman for that? She must really be needy, other­
wise she wouldn’t have done it. Let her go!”
The uniformed nanny goat releases the terrified woman for one
instant and grabs me by the wrist.
“Your ID card!” she shrieks hysterically.
I twist out of her sausage fingers and laugh in her face.
“I ain’t got none!”
This is too much for her uniformed brain. She raises her whistle to
her thin lips and blows it until the traffic cop lets the cars drive as they
like, and without asking what’s happened he jumps on me. Now the
passersby feel confident enough to call me an “agitator” and a “danger­
ous element.” The traffic cop twists my arms behind my back, and I
and the woman with the knapsack have to go along to the precinct.
“You’ve insulted my colleague’s uniform and resisted the author­
ity of the state!” a cop says at the precinct.
I can’t help it, I have to laugh.
78 Klaus K inski

“Stop laughing!” he yells, beside himself. “Or I’ll lock you up!”
I laugh all the louder. “You want me to cry?”
“I want you to shut your trap and speak only when you’re spo­
ken to!”
I have to laugh so loud that I choke.
“You’re making me laugh again, I can’t help it.”
I get a kick in the small of my back and land in a cell. There are se­
rial cages as in a zoo, with a cop walking up and down like a zookeeper
guarding predators, his ego boosted by my raging against the bars. He
must have been depressed before I got locked in the cage, for the
neighboring cages are empty. Now he grins scornfully, so he must feel
just fine and dandy. He slides his keys through his fingers like a rosary.
I shout at the top of my lungs, explaining that I’m friends with the
mayor of Berlin, who’s bosom buddies with John F. Kennedy, presi­
dent of the U.S. of A., and that I’m gonna get all the thugs of this
precinct fired. So the officer on duty lets me out of the cage and apolo­
gizes for the incident.
“What’s gonna happen to the woman?” I ask him when he pushes
me toward the exit to get rid of me.
“Nothing bad’ll happen to her,” the officer lies brazenly. Once
I’m out in the street again, I piss on the building.

After his release from prison, Achim tries to go straight. He watches

dogs, baby-sits, and donates blood twice a week. For every pint he
gets twenty marks and a big steak.
I figure I might as well hock my corpse. I’ve learned that while
you’re still alive you can sell your carcass to a medical school for a nice
handsome sum. My plan is to sell my “remains” to as many medical
schools as possible. But this idea goes awry because the onetime sale
of your corpse is noted on your ID card.
 Kinski Uncut 79

I hop a bus for Munich. I’ve heard that the Mardi Gras is just
crawling with half-naked chicks.
The Haus der Kunst is putting on a Van Gogh exhibition. This is
the first time that I’ve seen originals by Van Gogh. I dash outdoors,
weeping and wailing.
At the Art Academy carnival, I bump into Gislinde and Therese.
They’re both made up as Pierrot, wearing leotards that emphasize their
thighs, their little bellies, their teensy asses, and their sweet thick snail
shells. Both are drenched in sweat. I dance the night away with them. I
swallow their tongues. I knock both of them up that very same night.
Therese’s family forces her to get an abortion. But Gislinde car­
ries the baby to term. Therese is very sad. She wanted the kid, even
though she knows I can’t marry both girls. Nor do I ever talk marriage
to Gislinde. She just looks forward to having her baby.
I can’t fuck all the time; I have to make money too.
Fehling is at the Bavarian State Theater, so I make an appoint­
ment to see him. He reads my dramatization of Crime and Punish­
ment and says, “I’ll produce it with you, but not here. I take the
theater so seriously that I can only feel sorry for these pathetic hicks.
Let’s try and figure out where and when. Relax, you look very worn
out. Go to the country—my treat.”
Fehling is as charming as he was in Berlin, and he radiates the
same tremendous warmth and energy. But I’m worried that he’ll never
direct again.

As I climb into a streetcar, a girl stops dead in her tracks and flashes
her snow-white teeth at me. I jump off the now moving trolley. I don’t
know the girl. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her. She introduces
herself as Elsa. Elsa has a brownish face, long, black, stringy hair, eyes
that shine like metal, stifflips, and greedy, sensuous hands.
80 Klaus K inski

Elsa’s relatives all have high positions in the Catholic church.

One uncle is the pope’s “right-hand man.” The instant this clan finds
out that Elsa is whoring with the devil, they kick out the little lamb as
if she had the pox, and they cut off all support. Previously she was
having an affair with the Berlin head of the American secret service,
and he’s still after her. He came here specifically to track down Nazis
hidden in the Bavarian mountains. They wear lederhosen and live
somewhere or other, tending goats.
For a while he keeps giving her money. But then this source dries
up, too, because she has absolutely no time for him since we’re
“fucking like bunnies,” as she puts it. We live in a cranny at an old-
ladies’ boardinghouse in Schwabing and we get up only to find food.
Mostly we gobble raw eggs to keep our strength for fucking. But
when we can’t keep up the rent for our cranny we continue fucking in
the English Garden, at a graveyard in Bogenhausen, and in the circu­
lar corridor around the Angel of Peace.
Elsa shares a room with some church lady; I’m in a Catholic sem­
inary dorm that was founded by her grandfather. They haven’t get
gotten wind of the anathema inflicted on Elsa because of me, nor do
the small parishes know that Elsa is being screwed by Beelzebub. We
go begging in the churches, for the business about the uncle in the
Vatican and the grandfather who founded the dorms still has a certain
clout. At the church door the priest fobs us off with one lousy mark
from the cash register. You can imagine how many churches we have
to trudge to.
We’ll never get anywhere on these alms. But then two old
madams, Elli S. and Ilse A., who run an acting agency like a call girl
ring, take me on. This is how it works: I’m to live in a dressing room at
the Bavaria Film Studios so that I don’t wander off. Besides, the dress­
ing room doesn’t cost anything—it’s a kind of storeroom that’s in­
cluded in the rent for their office space. It’s a two-by-four cell in which
 Kinski Uncut 81

you’d go stir-crazy if you had to stay there alone. Whenever some di­
rector or producer walks into the agency office, which is one flight be­
low my loony bin, my hair is wet down with water and combed, and
then I’m shown off like a well-behaved brat. For this act I get a per
diem allowance of seven marks as an advance against any later salary. I
share the money with Elsa. I sneak down the fire escape and fuck her
in the forest, which starts right near Bavaria Film Studios.
The wife of an American photographer named Jones or Bones or
Clones or whatever arrives in Munich to make the rounds of the Ger­
man movie producers. At Bavaria she runs into me, of all people—and
even though she’s constantly chaperoned by her mother-in-law to
keep her from noshing on any dicks, we manage to grab a moment of
privacy in the Court Garden of the Feldherrnhalle.
She scratches up my face and chews me out because I won’t fuck
her standing against a tree after fingering her hot, drooling cunt. It just
won’t work. I can’t fuck her standing here. The bushes are too low
and so sparse that passersby would see everything.
We try the bombed-out synagogue. But it seems to have become a
latrine. Men are standing everywhere, pissing. Or jerking off.
Furious, she agrees to come back with me to my dressing room at
Bavaria Studios.
But stupidly, we’re spotted climbing the fire escape. At that in­
stant the two agency madams happen to have a client in the office, and
they want to display me like a hooker. They rattle the dressing-room
door, firmly convinced that we’ve locked ourselves in. I stop up the
keyhole and we try not to make a sound. This is very difficult because
the photographer’s wife pulled off her panties in the hall, and I can’t
manage to get my trousers off because she’s knelt down, opened my
fly, and is simply gobbling up my prick, so that I can’t yank it out. I
spurt in her throat. Then she grabs my head and squeezes my face be­
tween her widespread legs; and she comes so often that I lose count.
82 Klaus Kinski

Now she’s really raging and things get going. We keep switching posi­
tions, as if we were doing floor exercises.
The two madams keep coming upstairs and fanatically rattling the
door, shrieking that I’m spoiling a big opportunity and so on.
When the yelping at the door lasts too long, we cautiously con­
tinue. But the dyed-blond beast keeps wanting to scream. No scream,
no orgasm.
Outside it’s night. We can’t anymore. Besides, she suddenly re­
members, she’s got a mother-in-law at the hotel. Before she can clam­
ber down the fire escape in her crumpled, splattered dress, I jump her
once more from behind—and as she returns my thrusts, even deeper
and more brutally, we crawl on all fours toward the fire escape.
Since I can’t get anywhere in Munich, I have to head back to Berlin.
Elsa gives me the ballads of François Villon as a going-away present.
I read them in the bus. As we arrive at dawn, I know: I am Villon!
At the Café Melodie on the Ku’damm, I present my first recital of
the ballads of François Villon. The students of the art academy use
colored chalk to write “KINSKI READS VILLON” on the roadways
of the Ku’damm. Admission is free. I’ll pass the hat.
The Café Melodie is so mobbed that people step on each other’s
toes. The ones who can’t get in smash the windows, trying to force
their way inside. When a policeman interferes, they beat the shit out
of him.
I climb onto the nearest table and speak, shriek, yell, whisper,
puff, gasp, weep, laugh the ballads of François Villon out of my soul.
I’m barefoot, in a tattered sweater, and I have a peaked cap in which I
collect money after every ballad.
Sasha tosses a hundred-mark bill into the cap; others put in
from one to twenty marks, poor students fifty pennies or just ten,
one even throws in his last penny. In less than fifteen minutes the
cap is full.
 Kinski Uncut 83

Gislinde is in her ninth month and wants to give birth in Berlin be­
cause I can’t make it to Munich. I rent a run-down but huge studio
near the Ku’damm. I paint the whole place white and buy a lot of stuff
on the installment plan: an iron bed with a mattress, a raw-wood table
and two chairs, a laundry basket as a crib for the kid, baby blankets,
baby linen, and diapers. I don’t have enough money for bed linen. But
I do buy sunflowers, which I stick into pitchers that someone lends
me. I always take along one of the little baby shirts.
If it’s a girl, I’m gonna name her Pola. That’s the little girl in
Crime and Punishment who runs after Raskolnikov and hugs and
kisses him. Even though he’s a murderer.
My daughter is born at the clinic in the red-light district. I’m so
happy I tell all the hookers who walk up and down across from the
clinic. They all know me. They give me flowers for Gislinde.
When Pola first opens her eyes, she looks around angrily. A
thunderstorm breaks outside.
I don’t want these goddamn nuns to take my daughter from my
arms. The nuns get snotty. I curse them out. The mother superior asks
me to step into the corridor. There two policemen are waiting for me.
“You desecrators ofjesus!” I yell so loud that Gislinde must hear
me, for she emerges from the room with her suitcase and the baby,
and we hop a taxi to my studio.
I can’t keep up the payments for the furnishings, so the court
bailiff hauls them off. We sleep on the floor for one night. The next
morning I send Gislinde and Pola to her mother in Munich.

Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. Since I have no money, I dub the Rus­
sian film as well as two British movies starring Sabu.
84 K laus K inski

Sasha leases a theater on Kaiserallee for me. I’m to play the wom­
an in Jean Cocteau’s La Voix hnmaine(The Human Voice). The whole
thing is a monologue—a woman on the phone with her lover, who’s
dumped her. In the end she strangles herself with the telephone wire.
When I read the text all I can think of is being this woman. Why
not? In Shakespeare’s time there were no actresses. All the girls and
women, including Juliet, were played by men. Even the Mona Lisa
was a man. Anyway, who cares? I’m that woman, and that’s that!
The monologue fills twenty-four typewritten pages. I memorize
it in twenty-four hours. Then I dash over to Sasha and recite the
hour-long monologue to him. It takes all night: He keeps wanting to
hear it over and over again. At six A.M. his mother, Princess Nina
Kropotkin, comes stealing by in her nightgown and chews Sasha out
in Russian because she’s learned he’s invested a lot of money in the
theater. Tears of avarice run down her cheeks, even though she
herself is a millionaire and Sasha earns his own living. Her greasy hair
reminds me of the pawnbroker in Crime and Punishment, whose head
Raskolnikov splits open with an ax. Sasha now grabs a burning gold
candelabrum and hurls it at his mother.
“You shouldn’t do that, Sasha,” I tell him. “She’s your mom.”
But Sasha is beside himself, and I can’t get him to calm down. I leave
him alone and walk over to his floor-through on Königsallee.
However, I can’t breathe among this antique plunder and the
chichi gewgaws he gathered together for his weekends with hustlers
but never uses himself. I crawl into bushes in the villa garden and try
to nap.
Opening night is in four weeks. The theater is sold out for two
months. But then the production is prohibited by the military govern­
ment!
Sasha sends Cocteau a telegram in Paris. Cocteau wires back the
very same day:
 Kinski Uncut 85

Vm happy that Kinski is playing the part. I congratulate

him for his courage. I ’ll do my best to attend the premiere.
Jean Cocteau

But the shit-headed military administration refuses to rescind the ban.

Their asses are licked by the art-and-culture riffraff, who are scared of
a scandal.
Time passes. Sasha won’t keep paying because he’s under pres­
sure from his mother, who knows about the prohibition.
Sasha is drunk again and begs me on his knees to rescue him from
his unworthy life. I hurl the vodka bottle at the silk-covered wall and
tell him that he makes me puke. He yanks open the door of his safe:
“Take it all!”
Then he heads for a bar and drowns his hatred of his mother and
his own shitty life, which he never knew how to use.
I stand at the open safe, which is stuffed not only with packets of
banknotes but also diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds, and mountains
of gold. I don’t know why, but I give the safe door a kick and leave the
apartment without touching anything. I’ll never forgive myself.
I don’t want to go back to the villa. I walk to Wartburgstrasse.
The front door is locked. I smash the colored-glass pane and ring
Arne out of bed.
Arne now works in the editorial department of a newspaper for
housewives and has pulled his way up the ladder. He’s repaired his
apartment, bought furniture, owns suits, and wants to buy a car on the
installment plan. He doesn’t know what Achim’s up to, though Achim
drops by every now and again. Arne gives me the money for a bus
ticket to Munich. The vehicle’s shaking is agony, but I miss my
daughter.
Gislinde lives with her family on Mauerkircherstrasse near the
Isar bridge—that is, right across from the English Garden. Hexi is the
86 Klaus Kinski

youngest sister, she’s fourteen or fifteen. All she cares about is ham­
mering away on the piano. She has a face like Beethoven, and her
touch is so wonderful that I burst out crying when I hear her play.
When they no longer let her play in the apartment, and she can’t find
another venue, she kills herself.
Even though the family’s nice to me and I’ve married Gislinde, I
don’t live in their apartment. I spend my nights in the English Garden
or under the Isar Bridge. I’m happy that I’ve finally got the sky over­
head, otherwise I’d die.
Once a day I meet Gislinde, who brings me my daughter so I can
play with her, and sometimes she also brings some food or a couple of
marks. If no one’s at home, I go back with her and wash and shave. At
such times I also get a hot meal. Otherwise I wash in the icy mountain
water of the Isar. If it rains, I make a bed of leaves and cover myself
with branches. I leave my face exposed so that it rains on my mouth
and eyes. The raindrops are like hands caressing me, and I fall asleep.
Best of all I like thunderstorms. They make me truly happy.
When the nights grow colder, Gislinde brings me a blanket under
the Isar Bridge.
A director who wants to cast me in a Russian play gives me an old
baby carriage. I now wheel Pola through the English Garden. The
carriage is made of wickerwork, and I slip daisies into the gaps until
the entire carriage looks like a flower bed.
In the English Garden I encounter Wanda, who’s married to a Bul­
garian. She’s also wheeling her baby. Two hours later we’re lying in
the bushes. She’s a maternal animal through and through. Her mouth.
Her boobs. Her hips. Her butt. Her thighs. Her crotch. With every
thrust we wallow deeper into the ground. We’ve left the carriages
within our line of sight. It’s pitch-black out by the time we separate,
smeared with soil. She can’t find her panties. I hurled them away.
I visit her daily, first thing in the morning, when her husband
 Kinski Uncut 87

heads off to Radio Free Europe. They live in a furnished room, and
everything smells of urine and diapers, which are scattered over the
floor. I poke her in her double bed and drink from her long, full teats,
which, like the udder of a well-fed cow, are almost bursting and have
to be milked all the time. We’re so horny that we’re still banging away
when her husband comes home from work. I have to hide in the hall­
way broom closet.
In Berlin the fashion photographer Helmut von Gaza calls up the
two madams at the Bavaria Studios. He’s got a studio the size of a
meeting hall in his twelve-room apartment on the Ku’damm, and he
wants to offer this space for the staging of La Voix humaine. The pro­
duction can’t be outlawed because he plans to register it as part of a
theater club.
That same evening I hop the train for Berlin. Elsa has pawned her
watch for me. She’s now married to the general manager of the
Bayreuth Gas Company, and while he drapes her with all sorts of
gewgaws, he’s very tight-fisted with cash for her.
Once again performances of La Voix hunaine are sold out for
months in advance. I have no place to live. Arne uses only the balcony
room and the parlor of the apartment on Wartburgstrasse, and I settle
into Inge’s room, where I’m bothered least of all. My food consists of
hard-boiled eggs, hot water, and lemons.
But the premiere has to be put off again because I come down
with a bad case ofjaundice. I’m as yellow as a canary, but because I’ve
ignored the doctors’ warnings I collapse in the middle of the street. I
had been walking to Tempelhof to fuck two girls who wanted to take
care of me. Upon reaching their building entrance, I have no strength
left and I drop down in the gutter. The girls drag me to their bed and
call a physician, Dr. Milena Bösenberg.
She bends her pale, delicate face over me to listen to my heart­
beat—and she’s got such fine blue veins on her frail temples, and the
88 Klaus K inski

biggest eyes I’ve ever seen, and wonderful silky lips, which hang over
me like ripe raspberries, their skin about to tear and spray me with
their fruit blood. So I kiss her on the mouth.
Startled, she pulls out of my arms while her red blood shoots into
her white face as fast as it does into Snow White’s, in the glass coffin
after she’s brought back to life by the Prince’s kiss. Yet Milena opens
her mouth as if trying to puke out the poisoned apple.
She places me in the hospital near the zoo. The two girls pay an
advance because I’m to have a private room.
Milena visits me every day, but she won’t let me pull her into bed.
“Your hepatitis is so serious that you have to lie still,” she says
gently.
Twice a day I have to swallow a long tube, and gallons of my bile
flow into a pail.
A nun takes my temperature every evening; her tits graze my face
when she unhooks or hooks the fever chart over my head. I grab her
belly, but she acts as if nothing’s happened.
She comes back that night. And when she climbs on top of me
and straddles me and her thick pussy touches my mouth so I don’t
have to move, I eat her out.
The eight weeks in the hospital grind away at my nerves. I’m irri­
table and foul-tempered, and when the nurses apply a hot compress to
my gallbladder I hurl the compress at them. Nor do I have the pa­
tience to read. I’m a caged animal with no other thought in mind than
to break out.
Eventually I ask for pen and paper and I write an essay called
“The Perfect Crime.” The idea came to me a few weeks ago when I
reread Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov writes a similar essay,
which an investigating magistrate subsequently uses as incriminating
evidence against him. The novel doesn’t reproduce the essay. But I
write the text in case my version is ever staged and I play Raskolnikov.
 Kinski Uncut 89

I remember Holbein’s painting of Jesus in the grave: stiff, dead,

with a greenish face, his beard sharply pointing up against the soil that
has been shoveled over him. Carcass. Carrion. Decaying. Dostoevsky
was deeply frightened by the picture. He was afraid that the devout
might lose their faith in immortality if they saw this painting.
This night I escape from the hospital. I can’t stand it anymore.
The doctors don’t allow me out of bed, and I can’t pay the balance of
the bill anyway.
I walk to Tempelhof and ring Milena’s bell; her apartment doubles
as her office. She’s worried. She undresses me, bathes me, and puts me
in her bed. Then she switches off the light and undresses in the dark.
Her vaginal lips are as silky as her mouth. I piss my come deep in­
side her until she orders me to stop fucking. She says she only wants
me to fuck her when my balls are heavy, about to burst. So after shoot­
ing several loads, I go to sleep and collect new come.
Whenever I visit her and try to force my way between her thighs,
she first weighs my nuts in her hand to see if they’re the right weight.
She wants to make absolutely sure that I haven’t spurted my semen
into other cunts before she inserts my rod, which is so hard that it
hurts.
Milena is from Yugoslavia, she’s been a widow for years, and her
only contact is with her sister, an eye doctor with a daughter, Vera,
still in high school.
Milena not only lets me fuck her regularly, she eventually devel­
ops enough trust in me to take me along to her sister’s. She wouldn’t
have done it if she’d had any inkling that Vera and I would instantly
start fucking with our eyes.
I say I’m going to buy cigarettes, and Vera comes along. It’s dark
out. We come to an open construction site, where I have her lie down
on a pile of boards. I stick my tongue on her clit, making it dance an
Irish jig. When she rears up insanely, grabbing at my fly, I realize that
9 0 Klaus Kinski

buying cigarettes couldn’t possibly take any longer, and I pull her
home.
Neither her mother nor Milena notices anything. Vera instantly
goes to the bathroom. Nor do they find anything strange about the
fact that whenever Milena takes a leak I always dash out of the room
and listen to the sound of the piss hitting the bowl. Or that Milena
hangs around near the bathroom whenever I have to piss.
From now on I commute between Milena’s apartment and that of
Vera and her mother. Now here, now there. I also spend my nights in
either place. When Vera’s mother has to go to her office, Vera has to
go to school. I pick her up at school every day, but when we arrive
home her mother is already there, and she’d get suspicious if we were
late. Soon I go to Vera’s school during recess, when Vera dashes out
to me in the street and sucks my lips hard.
We can’t stand it anymore, and so today I go to Vera’s school at
ten A.M. I knock on the classroom door and tell the teacher that Vera’s
mother has sent me to bring Vera home immediately. Her mother’s
suddenly taken ill. The trick’s an oldie but a goldie—it works. Vera
doesn’t believe my silly story for an instant, and I have to violently
prevent her from hugging me in the teacher’s presence.
On the final step in front of the apartment, we start pulling off our
clothes, so by the time we get to her room we’re naked. With one
hand on the back of her neck and head and the other in the hollows of
her bent knees I heave her up so that her ass with its solid baby fat
sticks out. Then I turn her ass-backward toward the mirror.
“Do it already!” she begs hoarsely when I carry her toward the
bed. Before I penetrate her, she throws her head back and starts
moaning as she draws in her firm thighs and pulls her vaginal lips far
apart with the fingers of both hands. Soon the head of my dick is so
deep inside her that she shrieks and breaks into a cold sweat. . . . I
keep pushing in. . . . The opening is so tight that I feel as if my pecker*
 Kinski Uncut 91

is bound up and being drained of blood. . . . I stick my elbows on her

shoulders, grab her head with both hands on her skull, and by twist­
ing my abdomen forward and upward like a fucking billy goat, I push
and press with all my muscle power. She shrieks and squeals—and
then I’m totally inside her.
Why does Vera’s mother have to come home at this very mo­
ment? When we hear the door being unlocked, I yank my cock vio­
lently out of Vera, who refuses to give it up. Beside herself with rage
and hate, she dashes into the bathroom. I toss the bedcover over the
bloodstained sheet, stick my head under the water faucet, and walk to­
ward Vera’s mother in the corridor. I rub my hair and help her tote
the shopping bag into the kitchen.
“Today is Yugoslav Christmas,” she says, “and I have to do some
baking.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about; I just keep rubbing my hair
as if it won’t dry. She takes the towel from my hands and massages my
head. I forgot to close my fly, and now it opens. When she sees my
boner, she must think it’s her doing. She drops the towel, kneels
down in front of me, and slurp!—she deep-throats my whole dick like
a vacuum cleaner.
She’s not surprised that Vera is home this time of day. She’s got
only one thing on her mind: fucking. Nor does Vera think of anything
but fucking. And I think about Vera, her mother, and Milena.
Vera must have done a good job ofjerking off in the bathroom—
I’ve never seen her with such dark rings around the eyes. Her eyes
sparkle nastily. Her mother doesn’t even look at her.
Milena arrives in the afternoon; the three of them speak in Serbo-
Croatian, and I’ve got my peace of mind until evening. I lie on my bed
and daydream about all three women naked: Milena, Vera, and her
mother. Frankly, all three of them juice me up.
When the Yugoslav Christmas party finally comes to an end, Vera
92 K laus K inski

instantly goes to bed, probably to jerk off. Milena also says good night,
because her sister says over my head, “He’s spending the night.”
As soon as Milena leaves, Vera’s mother switches off the light,
grabs my cock in the darkness, and pulls me into her bedroom. She
rides me till morning and dozes off while crouching on me.
So far everything has gone smoothly. But the bomb explodes
when Vera’s mother sees me fucking Vera and tries to kill herself.
Milena and Vera instantly catch on. Milena hates her sister and
Vera. Vera hates her mother and her aunt. Vera’s mother hates the
two others. And all three hate me.
The situation gets even more complicated when the two girls who
summoned Milena to my sickbed come to her office and claim I’ve
knocked up both of them. When they refuse to let Milena examine
them, she slaps them.
Despite the family quarrel, Milena lets me keep living with her,
and she keeps giving me money. When the dust has settled, she opens
my fly, pulls out my dick, and weighs my nuts in her hands to deter­
mine whether they’re heavy enough. When she’s satisfied with the
weight, she spreads her legs and fucks like a whore.

I now feel strong enough to schedule the first few performances of La

Voix humaine. The premiere takes place at night. Some spectators
come chiefly out of curiosity—they’ve never seen a man play a woman.
“I’m only here to laugh at him,” some creep says. But after the perfor­
mance he tearfully holds his hands in front of his face and disappears.
Months later, when Cocteau arrives for the opening of his film Or-
phée (Orpheus), he asks me to reprise the role of the woman in La Voix
humaine. When I’m done he kisses me and says, “Your face is as
young as a child’s and yet your eyes are utterly mature. They switch
from one instant to the next. I’ve never seen such a face.”
 Kinski Uncut 93

Since I wasn’t fully healed when I fled the hospital, I have constant
gallbladder pains. I find some pills in Milena’s office, and I swallow
them, not realizing they’re the wrong ones.
I wake up in an emergency room, where they think I deliberately
tried to poison myself.
After they pump out my stomach and bring me back to life with
shots, I make a break for it, jumping out a second-story window. Be­
fore I can scale the hospital wall, the orderlies catch up with me, yank
me down from the wall like bark off a tree, and violently drag me back.
Milena isn’t scheduled to come until noon, and so I’m at the
mercy of this riffraff. After the cattle doctor has ordered security mea­
sures as if for a criminal, I hurl the bedpan at him, so they strap me to
the bed. A short time later the quack returns with a cop, who is sup­
posed to hand me over to the district physician.
That louse of a district doctor wants every last detail. He asks me
if I’m having an affair with Frau Dr. Milena Bösenberg. I piss on him.
He’d be delighted to lock me up immediately at the Wittenau In­
sane Asylum, but Milena suddenly shows up. She promises to cover all
expenses if the district physician will be kind enough to turn me over
to a private hospital institution instead of Wittenau. Milena can’t really
prevent her colleague from doing what he wants. She herself is partly
to blame, because out of fear—and probably also out ofjealousy over
the family fucking—she refuses to admit to this medical creep that she
whores around with me. On the contrary: She claims she barely knows
me, and says she feels sorry for me because I’ve got no one to take care
of me. Nothing can prevent my being transported to the loony bin.
“Why, this is quite an honor,” the meat inspector purrs in the
locked ward, “to have such a great actor visiting us.”
I kick him in the balls.
94 Klaus K inski

“Wittenau! Take him to Wittenau!” the hyena screeches. Covered

by two orderlies, the coward recoils. The door, which has no knob,
snaps shut.
I examine the barred window, which faces the courtyard. Even if I
managed to remove the tight mesh, I couldn’t jump from the fourth
floor down to the stones without smashing every bone in my body.
The knobless door is pushed open. Four orderlies pounce on me
and bind me up in a straitjacket. Then I’m taken downstairs and
loaded into a VW van camouflaged as an ambulance. Its motor run­
ning, its doors open, it waits for me in the courtyard.
During the drive I don’t recognize very much. The panes are
frosted—only the narrow borders around the crosses are slightly
transparent—and for a few seconds I spot the Radio Tower. How of­
ten have I passed it en route to see Vera, her mother, and Milena, who
have so shabbily run out on me.
Wittenau. Berlin’s infamous insane asylum. The VW van is
stopped, checked out, and then it passes through the heavily guarded
entrance. I try to make out details through the borders of the crosses.
But the van is moving too fast. All I grasp is that this is a gigantic com­
plex (how many alleged lunatics there are!): asphalt streets, blocks,
many other variously large or small stone barracks—probably laun­
dries, kitchens, garbage dumps, mortuary. Everything is enclosed by
a high wall.
The VW van stops outside the reception building. I’m unloaded
directly into the waiting room.
They unknot the straitjacket, I promptly move and massage my
lifeless arms and wrists. One of the bullies shoves me down on a
bench. I have to wait. For a long time.
The room is high, bare, the walls are painted green at head level
like the gas chambers in America. The blind windowpanes are
densely barred. Bars everywhere. Knobless doors everywhere. Con­
 Kinski Uncut 95

stant rattling of keys. Locking, unlocking, locking—always two, three,

four doors in a row.
Other prisoners are led past me. You can tell they’ve been here
for a long time. They shuffle along with the bullies, like robots. They
let themselves be directed, shoved. The staff busily hurries to and fro.
They wear grimy jackets, the sleeves pushed up the red butcher arms.
The condemned wear prison outfits: long gray cotton gowns and
something like slippers on their bare feet.
Then there are newcomers like me. Some resist. They refuse to
be pushed and pulled despite brutal slaps and punches. They have to
be carried.
Some are accompanied by a family member, who quickly says
good-bye and dashes out. Most are alone, with only bullies right and
left. Some aren’t all there. Some cry. A woman screams. Her scream
drills into my heart. She throws herself on the floor, lashes out. Knob­
less doors open. The woman is lugged away, her feet dragging along
as if she were being hauled to the guillotine. Everything runs as swiftly
and smoothly as an execution.
If only I could get something for my headache! A meat inspector
assigns me to Ward III. It’s catercorner from the next block, so we
walk there. This time there are only two bullies. I try to get my bear­
ings and memorize details. But everything looks the same: stone
blocks, asphalt streets, stone blocks. We arrive.
One flight up I’m handed over to another slaughterer, and it never
even occurs to him that I might resist. Behind us at least ten knobless
doors have slammed shut. He assesses me with an expert eye but
without looking into my face, as if he were calculating my height and
weight. He can’t be doing it for the asylum uniform, because he tosses
a gray package and a pair of slippers in front of me without checking if
the stuff fits. I’m ordered to strip naked. He resolutely grabs my
clothes and stuffs them into a sack like garbage as if to say: “You don’t
96 Klaus Kinski

need this anymore!” I’m weighted like a side of beef. Then I’m mea­
sured. Then I’m hosed down with an ice-cold stream of water.
The bare, barred, tubelike room contains a row of ten iron bath­
tubs like open coffins. If an inmate has a “crisis” he’s shoved into a tub
of ice-cold water. And he has to endure the ice-cold water until his
“crisis” is over. If it doesn’t pass he gets electroshock. And if that
doesn’t help, then the victim is thrown into solitary confinement.
They take away his gown and slippers so that he won’t tear or bite
them into strips and hang himself. There’s no toilet in the isolation
cell. And no food. It’s not worth feeding the inmates. Most of them
become hopelessly insane, if they don’t kick the bucket first.
I pull on the gray gown and the slippers and I’m taken to the room
where I’m received by the permanent watchdogs.
In this room, where I’m locked in with some eighty to a hundred
fellow inmates, everything takes place: sleeping, eating, pissing, shit­
ting, screaming, raging, wailing, crying, agonizing, and the final col­
lapse of anyone who survives. The stench is indescribable. This is
hell! True hell!
Someone shrieks tearfully. Two watchdogs stifle his shrieks.
They bandage up his mouth and strap him to his bed.
Just don’t look! Don’t look, I keep telling myself. Don’t listen!
Don’t inhale that saccharine smell that triggers nausea, like those
lumps of fat in the children’s hell. My God! How many years ago was
that—and now this! Now the adult hell!
But I mustn’t bitch! I mustn’t lose heart, no matter what! I mustn’t
even get sad! Sadness would reduce my hatred—and I need hatred!
Not scorn! Scorn is tiring! I need nasty, vindictive hatred!
I talk to myself. Not too loudly or too softly—just loudly enough
so I can barely hear myself. I reel off my date of birth, phone numbers,
house numbers, names. I mustn’t weaken. The tragedy is starting to
befuddle me like a drug. I have to stay physically fit. I do knee bends,
 Kinski Uncut 97

upper-body circles. Keep moving! Don’t halt, keep going, going. But
where? We’re not allowed to move away from our beds except to piss
or shit.
Food is handed out. I don’t touch the swill. When the others no­
tice that I’m not eating they pounce on my tray. The watchdog jots it
down in his notebook.
My headache gets so unbearable that I ask one of the thugs for an
aspirin. He pays no attention, even after I repeat the question. Don’t
let him provoke you, I tell myself. Just turn around, go away, forget I
asked this creep a question. Forget I’ve got such awful pains.
But the pains get worse and worse. With every shriek from a fel­
low sufferer. With every rage, curse, threat. With every punch from
the fists of these slavedrivers. With every dull blow that hits a Jesus
Christ. With every gagged and weeping mouth. With every footscrape
as someone is dragged out of the room. With every moan, curse, fart,
piss, shit into the toilet that stands in the middle of the room.
I pray to God. Yes! I pray to God to increase my pains, make
them worse and worse! We’ll see whether my head bursts. That was
how Jesus must have prayed in Gethsemane: “My God, if you want
me to endure all this, then give me the strength!”
He gives me the strength. I do not go crazy. I visualize Idea, a
linocut by Frans Masereel: A man in prison is illuminated by the
idea of freedom coming to his dungeon as a naked woman and
squeezing her breasts through the bars so that he may drink and
gain strength.
I already think I’ve weathered it, but it’s not that simple. When I
approach the barred window to see a patch of sky, one of the watch­
dogs orders me to go back. I turn around and weep. A one-legged in­
mate whispers to me: “Don’t cry! If you cry, it means you’re not
healthy.”
At the barred windows, which reveal only the gray wall of another
98 K laus K inski

block, the watchdogs sit at a table, jotting everything down in a note­

book: When you cry. When you laugh. When you eat. When you
don’t eat. When you eat another inmate’s food. When you talk. When
you don’t talk. When you approach the barred windows. When you
get too much sleep. When you don’t sleep. There is nothing they
don’t jot down in the notebooks.
“Are you a lathe operator?” asks the one-legged guy. “You’ve got
strong upper arms.”
I can’t tell him I’m an actor. He’d think I was trying to pull a
fast one.
“Yes, I operate a lathe,” I say, to avoid disappointing him.
His sad story is so shattering that I forget my own troubles. He re­
turned from a Russian POW camp. During his captivity his wife,
whom he loved more than anything in the world, had learned from the
Red Cross that he was still alive, but that a hand grenade had ripped
off one leg. So she had him declared dead. The one-legged guy, using
crutches, limped into his house and found his wife in bed, fucking
with some guy. Naturally he began smashing his crutch into them.
Then he lapsed into a crying jag.
The wife and her boyfriend had him declared mentally incapaci­
tated and dangerous and quickly got him into Wittenau.
“I just wanna live long enough to get out of here and kill them
both,” he said, concluding his tale.
The cattle doctor shows up every three days. When he talks to me,
I turn my back to avoid jumping at his throat. He doesn’t talk
to me during the next few weeks. Then I’m taken to his office. I
realize why when I discover Milena hugging the barred window. She
doesn’t have the nerve to look at me, and I don’t say hello to her. I re­
main standing after the slimy jellyfish of a psychiatrist offers me a chair.
He demands that I sign a paper stating that Dr. Milena Bösenberg
is not responsible for my incarceration in the asylum and that I agree
 Kinski Uncut 99

to leave her alone in the future—that is, neither to get revenge on her
nor to attempt any sort of contact with her, much less approach her. If
I refuse to sign, they won’t release me.
I’m so flabbergasted that I forget about this vile extortion for a
moment and wonder what could have driven this flabby eunuch to
pimp for Milena. Has she given him good head? She must be scared
shitless that people might find out we’ve been fucking.
Maybe these cockroaches think I’ve gone crazy, for the Moloch
whispers his good-byes to Milena and hastily sees her to the door.
Nothing can prevent me from doing what I feel like once I’m free.
The myopic jellyfish grabs the document as if it were a love note
from Milena, folds it neatly, and fussily slips it into his wallet.
“Everything’s settled,” he says unctuously, “but I’d like to have a
chat with you. You interest me.”
“But I don’t wish to chat with you. I want to get out of this
garbage dump for human brains, and right away!”
I’m certain that only the watchdog standing at the door could pre­
vent me from killing this eunuch with the paperweight—a grenade
shell. I can already see the ripped steel of the half-exploded grenade
shell chewing into his disgusting fat scalp like shark teeth so that it can
never be sewn up again. I see myself striking again and again between
the bulging toad eyes, and again and again on the back of his head and
smashing his cranium so that all that remains is a randy, bloody,
pulpy, stinking lump. All I have to do is reach out for the paper­
weight. But I don’t. Not yet.
“Why get so excited? Everything will work out. I give you my
word.”
Word. What kind of word can he give me? What kind of word can
such a stinking piece of dung have? I would shit into his hand if he
held it out to me.
“Tell your torturers to bring me my belongings!”
100 K laus K inski

“All in good time. It can’t go as fast as you imagine. First,

your brother has to come and talk to me. Dr. Bösenberg has already
notified him; he’ll come here tomorrow.”
“My brother? . . . Why does my brother have to talk to you?”
“I’d like him to tell me about you. I’ve already explained: You in­
terest me. After all, I’ll be responsible for releasing you. But you won’t
tell me anything.”
“What?”
“For instance, what you do with your hands when you talk. Have
you always done that?”
I’m convinced that this sadist is crazy—and why shouldn’t he be?
My hands are my language, like my eyes, my mouth, my whole body. I
express myself with them. I’m itching to say: “You’ll know what I do
with my hands when I strangle you.” But I hold my tongue. I say
nothing more. I leave his office wordlessly, and the watchdog takes
me back to the torture chamber. If Arne really does know where I am,
he’ll get me out of here even if he dies trying.
After endless eternities in the adult hell, we embrace, and Arne
drives me in his new Ford to Wartburgstrasse. He asks me no ques­
tions and is very tender. He realizes I can’t talk now. After taking a
bath and stuffing my belly, I thank him. I accept the money and ciga­
rettes he offers me and I kiss him good-bye. He cries.
It’s spring, and I can see the apples growing in girls’ blouses and I
can smell their pussy plums ripening.
I’m in a mobbed bus, wedged in by shoving passengers, who
make me feel claustrophobic. Panicking, I fight my way out. Merely
being elbowed brings tears to my eyes.
I walk all the way to Clayallee. The British ambassador’s villa
must be located in a side street. Some time ago a young student offered
to let me live with him and his mother in a wooden cottage on the
grounds of the British embassy, where she works as a cleaning woman.
 Kinski Uncut 101

I lie in the flower beds for days on end, my face toward the sky.
For the first few nights I sleep outdoors. I have to start living again. I
don’t leave the property for two months and I see no one except the
boy and his mother. In the daytime I’m alone. The student is on cam­
pus, and his mother spends all day in the ambassador’s villa. She must
be about thirty-five. I always get very close to her because her skirt
smells so sharp. I believe she is a terribly open person. Whenever she
uses the toilet, the strong smell lingers on. I rack my brain, scheming
about how I can fuck her.
I’m totally convinced that I’ve got the adult hell out of my system,
for my physical strength is also restored. But then a wasp on the
windowpane drives me crazy with its buzzing while I sit at the table by
the window, staring at the sky. I open the window to let the wasp out,
but it doesn’t fly away. For a while everything is silent. Then the wasp
starts buzzing again and drumming its head against the pane. Bang!
You’d think the wasp was drunk. Or doing this to get my attention. It
wants me to deal with it. Perhaps it enjoys teasing. I should try as hard
as I can to catch it even though I’m certain I won’t succeed. I should
touch it, even graze it—without hurting it, of course. Brush its ass, and
so on.
Its buzzing is so supersonic that I have to put my hands on my
ears. This goes on for several hours. Whenever I remove my fists from
my ears, the wasp starts in again, as if it were watching me and just
waiting to fly headfirst against the pane. I try to hit it, but I miss. It
hides. I know it’s watching me. As soon as I sit back down at the table,
hoping that I’ve killed it or it’s flown away, the torture resumes. I
press my fists against my ears until I’m certain that the wasp is finally
fed up with tormenting me. But when I remove my fists, it starts all
over again. This time it sounds as if the wasp were banging its skull
against the pane more violently than ever.
I remain sitting for a while without covering my ears. While
102 K laus K inski

watching the wasp from the corners of my eyes, I pretend I’m not
looking. In a surprise attack I rip the tablecloth—with the ink, the
honey jar, and everything else—from the table and knock the wasp
to the floor. The wasp is merely stunned. I tear a thread from the
tablecloth and strangle the wasp. Then I incinerate it over the gas
flame. As its charring body crackles and slowly fades out, I realize that
the wasp is not to blame for what they did to me in Wittenau.

“How could anyone dare to keep him from me for years?” says Fritz
Kortner after our first meeting. “He is the only actor the mere sight
of whom shakes me up. In all the world there’s no other Don Carlos
forme!”
Four years ago those sickening actors at the Schlossparktheater
laughed at me when I said that someday I’d be Don Carlos.
After a few weeks of rehearsing with Kortner I’m fed up with his
unfair, dictatorial ways. I yell at him to go fuck himself.

Paul is an architect and he says he’s been after me for a while. I find
out why when I have dinner with him and his wife, Erni. After dinner
he heads for the bathroom while Erni clears the table. Even though it
would be a lot more convenient to get the dishes from the other side,
she leans so far across the table that I get her gigantic ass right in front
of my face. Her skirt hikes up so high that I can see the edge of her
soaked panties. She has no choice but to leave the table as is, and we
dash to the bed. When I shoot, Erni hits the ceiling.
“You’ve gotta hold back longer! What am I gonna do now? I’m so
horny I don’t know what to do!”
“Paul can continue fucking you,” I snottily retort.
“That’s just it! Paul shoots too fast, too! The two of you have to
 Kinski Uncut 103

control yourselves for a lot longer! I need both of you, both of you for
a long time!”
At four the next afternoon we finally have breakfast.
They live on the top floor of a huge villa that belongs to Paul’s
father, a famous architect. I don’t move in; I just go over to
fuck—which, however, sometimes takes several days and nights.
Erni could keep fucking to the point of cardiac arrest. My cardiac
arrest.
When Paul and Erni have to go to Frankfurt, where Paul has a
project, I’m deliriously happy. Not because I have to fuck so much,
but I’m sick of playing the stud for a little food.
Why am I a whore? I need love! Love! Nonstop! And I want to
give love because I have so much of it. No one understands that the
sole purpose of my whoring is to spend myself totally!

After turning down more than a dozen movie offers, because either
the scripts were feebleminded or the producers thought I was asking
for too much money, I’ve finally signed a movie contract today. The
director is a man named Verhöven. I go to the location in Wiesbaden.
Verhöven asks me to cue a young beginner in her screen test. Two
days later they cancel my contract and pay me off, commenting: “Herr
Verhöven feels that your face is too strong for the German screen.”
This is the worst shit anyone’s ever pulled on me. But fuck it, as
long as I’ve got the bread!
I order a suit, buy a shirt and a handkerchief and finally socks so
that I don’t always have to wear my shoes barefoot. For my daughter,
Pola, I buy patent-leather shoes, and I order a burgundy velvet suit for
her with cuffs and collar of Brussels lace, plus tiny white kid gloves. At
Braun 8c Co. I have them model the most expensive suit for Gislinde
and I take the tall model to the Clara, a small hotel.
104 K laus Kinski

The model introduces me to the Maccabee girl. She runs an Aus­

trian movie distribution firm, drives a big car, and takes me on a
round trip to Salzburg.
She smells of sweat and cheap perfume and is hairy all over—on
her arms, her legs, even her boobs. Hair sprouts from her ass crack,
out of her panties, high up on her belly, and down to her inner thighs.
I discover this on the very first day, because if we don’t find a rest stop
along the thruway we’ll cause an accident. When we head back to the
autobahn I have to drive because she keeps coming.
“Faster! Faster!” she wails. She wants to get back to her apartment
at the Max II monument.
Soon I prefer fucking her in the elevator going up to her pad. She
bends over while standing, and I shove it in from behind. A couple of
times, from the ground floor to the top, up and down, up and down,
and that’s it. Then I let her get out on the top story, just as she is, with a
hiked-up skirt and yanked-down panties, a messy butt and torn stock­
ings. I press the main-floor button. While descending, I use spit to rub
the stains from my fly. This way, I don’t even have to go to her pad.
For once I’m there, I have to keep my dick inside her nonstop.
Even in the morning, at the breakfast table, she sits on me with her
naked ass, as if I were a throne. When she takes a bath, she sticks her
naked ass out of the water. When she cooks, she wears nothing but an
apron, which exposes her naked ass. Even when her upper body’s all
spiffed up and she’s wearing garters, stockings, and high heels, and
even some horrible hat, she sticks out her naked ass toward me.
Everywhere and always her hairy naked ass, which glares at me like an
order, like a command that I can’t resist. Sleep is out of the question,
even though I deliberately crash in the next room. Whenever I stagger
toward beddy-bye, thinking she’s finally satisfied after hours of fuck­
ing, she shows up yet again to give me a final good-night kiss—and
then remains lying on me, legs spread wide.
 Kinski Uncut 105

The hell with her distribution firm: this Maccabee needs the en­
tire Israeli army.

Letters from the court, judicial payment orders, subpoenas, re­

minders, threats: In short, I never open any letter with an official re­
turn address. I toss them in the garbage or into the Isar, where they
briefly drift downstream before going under. So I don’t have a clue
that I’ve been charged with insulting a police officer and resisting ar­
rest after a slugfest with some guy who turned out to be a police detec­
tive. Nor do I realize that I’ve been sentenced to four months in prison
plus probation. I’m also supposed to pay a fine. If I don’t pay the fine,
I’ll have to report to Stadelheim Prison with underwear, a razor, and
toothpaste.
A young lawyer named Zieger lives at the Clara. But he can’t take
my case because he wants to make it in the movie business. l ie wants
to gain a name for himself as a divorce attorney. He wants to file di­
vorces; he wants to divorce actors and actresses from one another—
divorce, divorce, nothing but divorce. He’s totally obsessed. People
in the business say, “He’s making it!” and they all run to him.
So he can’t occupy himself with prisons. Instead, he recommends
Rudolf Amesmaier—luckily for me. Not only does Rudolf instantly
becomes my friend and never run out on me, but he’s also the best de­
fense attorney. He does it all between sausages and beer. I don’t have
to go to prison or pay a fine.

I can no longer take the model from Braun 8c Co. back to the Clara:
We need too much space, and I’m living in a two-by-four across
from the toilet. Anyone who’s sitting on the bowl, and there’s always
someone on the bowl, can hear her shriek. In itself, that wouldn’t be
106 K laus K inski

a reason to stop fucking her here. But the queer journalist from the
Frankfurter Allgemeine, the photographer from Stern, and all the
others who live here go ballistic when they can’t sleep at night, and
Madam Clara can’t gossip in peace inside her parlor, which is next
to my two-by-four. That’s the reason. And even if there were no rea­
son, my cot would be too close to the walls of my pad for my
model’s long legs.
I would’ve gone to her place from the very start, but it’s always so
hard for us to separate, and I oversleep and miss everything I have to
take care of. I can’t oversleep at Madam Clara’s because we all have
to show up punctually for breakfast, otherwise we get nothing. So
everyone wakes up everyone else.
My model lives over the car dealership on Leopoldstrasse. All
these buildings contain stores, and at night her shrieks are heard only
by the watchman making his rounds.

Alexander the Great is a completely idiotic play, which no one under­

stands. Nevertheless, I play Alexander because I need money and I
receive an advance.
There are three women playing opposite me: a tall, athletic
eighteen-year-old; a fifteen-year-old with baby fat; and a short, skinny
twenty-four-year-old divorcée with two kids.
I visit the athlete twice on Türkenstrasse. She babbles on and on
about her movie-star dentist in Grünwald, who pretends to be patch­
ing up something or other on her healthy teeth. I believe he fucks her,
for she has no money. I try not to listen to her, and I pull myself along
her strong sprinter legs up to her teeth, which she intends to swap for
jacket crowns, and without interrupting her flow of speech I do gym­
nastics on top of her. Then she forgets all about the dentist and comes
quickly to the final spurt.
 Kinski Uncut 107

I don’t finish up my affair with the skinny twenty-four-year-old all

that fast. We wordlessly drag her mattress to the floor because the bed
in her rented room is too fragile. Quickly and simultaneously we un­
dress. Sex itself is as smooth as a baby’s ass and without complica­
tions. Her legs come apart in a split, opening totally, while she digs
her long, sharp fingernails into my body; her body encloses me like a
diving suit, absorbing my itching and distortedly swollen dick over
and over again without our mouths ever touching. I never even kiss
her. None of this is unusual. But this divorced mother is like a hard
drug that you shoot into your veins, like morphine or smack. The
harder I try to get away—because I know she’s gonna ruin me and be­
cause I don’t even long for her—the more often I catch myself heading
yet again toward her room, where she waits for me in her bathrobe
day and night, as if she knows that I have to return to her.
She doesn’t even look at me, she’s so sure of me. Things go so far
that I start absolutely hating her; I don’t say a word to her, and yet I
dash back to her two, three, four times a day. Eventually I curse her
out, slap her face, and punch her body. She doesn’t bat an eye; in­
stead she gives me a triumphant and half-crazy look. Sometimes we
cook in her place, but we eat less and less. She’s all skin and bones
anyway. We look like a couple of addicts; our feverishly glittering eyes
lie deep in their sockets. The wide, dark rings notched underneath
pull all the way to our cheekbones. Our throats are parched by a burn­
ing thirst. Our pulses are abnormally rapid, and all our veins swell.
Our ears buzz. The weaker we get, the more immense our desire. I
can feel my own painful orgasms all the way into my brain.
You can fuck yourself to death like this, even if you don’t have a
heart attack. I’m saved by the director, who hasn’t been able to re­
hearse for several days because we haven’t shown up. He threatens to
stop all further payments if this goes on. I don’t tell him I’m addicted
to the skinny bitch. I tell him I can’t stand her. He rehearses her
108 K laus K inski

separately so that we don’t meet, while she herself has to keep rehears­
ing nonstop.
But I’m wrong: The director can’t save my life.
Four A.M. We’re raiding his fridge when his wife, wearing a
corset, comes into the kitchen and joins our pig-out.
My eyes bulge. I’m so surprised that I don’t notice right off that
she’s got nothing on but a corset. I just gawk, hypnotized by her thigh
flesh. In the first place, the black corset, which reaches down to her
bladder, melts into the luxuriant brownish-black seaweed of her
mound and into the venomously sweet weeds in her armpits. In the
second place, I would never have dreamt that such a huge pussy could
possibly exist.
After our meals, she lets us tie her to their double bed. She’s stark
naked; her body shines with cold, sticky sweat. We take turns till she
can’t go on anymore.
We finally untie her in the afternoon. She remains in her spread-
eagled position, and the three of us crash till the next day.

I perform in another bar: “KINSKI RECITES VILLON.” Again I

stand barefoot on a table. This time I charge five marks’ admission. I
empty the take directly into my trouser pocket.
Gislinde has gone to the country with a girlfriend. Pola is with her
grandma. When she refuses to give her to me, I yank her out of the old
lady’s arms. I take along some clothes in a paper bag. The bag falls
apart in the street. I wedge Pola’s clothes under my arm and look for a
room to rent in the rooming house on Giselastrasse.
In the daytime I take Pola to the English Garden and ride a buggy
and a merry-go-round with her at the Chinese Tower. In the evening,
I take her back to the hotel, wash her in the sink, and put her to bed.
Then I walk over to the bar and recite Villon.
 Kinski Uncut 109

Tatjana Gsovsky, the Russian ballet mistress of the Berlin State

Opera, summons me to Berlin for the International Theater Festival.
She’s staging and choreographing Dostoevsky’s The Idiot9 and I’m
supposed to play the title role, Prince Myshkin. The whole thing is a
mixed-media fusion of pantomime, classical ballet, and theater. The
prima ballerinas, the dancers, and the corps de ballet are dancing in
classic style; I’m supposed to adjust my gait, posture, and movements
in pantomime and recite a long monologue.
The rehearsals won’t start for another three months. Tatjana
mails me the contract, asking me to let my hair and beard grow so that
I won’t have to wear a wig or paste up my face.
My long-hair period becomes a martyrdom. People in the street
aren’t used to seeing a man with long hair unless he’s a Russian Or­
thodox priest. I’m cursed and yelled at everywhere, and so I go out­
doors only when it’s dark. Not because I’m scared, but it gets simply
unbearable. At Munich’s railroad terminal the people spit at me.
Some throw stones.
Gislinde and I get divorced. We’re both sad about it, but she
knows quite well that I can never lead an orderly life and that’s its bet­
ter for us to give one another our freedom. The suggestion comes
from Gislinde herself even though she loves me so much that she’s
willing to give up anything and everything.
Since I can’t wait the required period for a divorce date, Rudolf
Amesmaier makes it possible for me to testify in court ahead of time.
“When did you last have sexual intercourse with your spouse?”
that louse of a divorce judge asks me.
“Even if I could remember with all my whoring around, I wouldn’t
tell you.”
I don’t contest the divorce, and the red tape is taken care of.
110 K laus K inski

In Berlin, I live with Tatjana. She makes my bed, cleans my room,

cooks for me, and takes care of everything else. She also trains sixteen
hours a day.
The prima ballerina, Nastassja, is half Dutch, half Indonesian.
Her smooth, silvery black hair reaches all the way down to the crack
of her teensy ass. She’s got the body of a teenage Balinese dancer, but
she’s a bit taller. I don’t know where we draw the strength to train six­
teen hours a day after fucking all night. But we’re so horny and ob­
sessed that all we need to stay fit is food and vitamins.
Jasmin, former prima ballerina of the Oslo Opera, has nothing to
do with Tatjana’s ballet. She’s twenty-two and fresh from Paris; she’s
had to give up dancing because of a spinal injury. She introduces her­
self to me as a “journalist.” The alleged interview she asks for never
gets written. Since we can’t fuck in Tatjana’s apartment because of
Nastassja, Jasmin rents a hotel room.
She clings to my body like a girl on the backseat of a motorcycle. I
can’t take a step without her. She even brushes my teeth, bathes me,
and holds my pecker when I take a leak. If I’m on the telephone, she
wraps her thighs around me or sucks my dick. The waiters simply
place food outside our door. The maids never have anything to do be­
cause Jasmin has to sleep while I train.
Ramon, the Indian dancer who’s friendly with Jasmin from God
knows where, performs in the International Theater Festival.
He pays for Jasmin’s and my hotel room. When the rehearsals be­
gin, Jasmin is everywhere: in my dressing room, backstage, in the au­
ditorium. And we fuck everywhere: on beds, on floors, in corridors,
in the street, in the subway, in the movies, on the plane. And above
all in the forests along the Havel River.
The Idiot is a smash hit, and we’re invited to the Venice Festival.
 Kinski Uncut 111

I hate to leave Jasmin behind. During my absence she wants to go

to Paris and try to earn some money. Then we plan to take an apart­
ment together.

In Venice our troupe stays on the Lido, in a small pensione belonging

to Duse’s nephew. He gives us everything for free. The Italians are so
warm, so hospitable, so overflowing with spontaneous love that I feel
like an émigré who’s returned to his native land. They are also uncon­
trollably nosy. Wherever the Dutch-Indonesian half-breed turns up
with me—at the Piazza San Marco, on the Grand Canal, even in a gon­
dola squeezing through the most remote canals—people instantly
cluster around us. They talk, gesticulate, shout, laugh, throng, touch
us as if we were rare, exotic plants, and do anything to make it clear
that they love us.
I embrace you, Italy, you wonderland.
Meanwhile our troupe’s been invited to perform in both North
and South America, and Tatjana also plans to tour Japan and Aus­
tralia.
But after everyone screws everyone else, an ominous atmosphere
of hatred, jealousy, and revenge makes it impossible for us all to live
together. In Venice we even quarrel about our wages after someone
runs off with half the take. So now mayhem and murder dominate our
troupe.

Jasmin is waiting for me in Paris, but I don’t head there straightaway.

Instead I fly to New York, where the half-breed is scheduled to dance
at the New York City Ballet. Six weeks later I fly to Paris.
Meanwhile Jasmin has been hard at work. She refused a striptease
offer because the money wasn’t good enough. But she seems to be
112 K laus K inski

making a lot of money anyway. The dress she’s wearing on her naked
skin must have cost at least a thousand francs.
“Tell me.”
“What?”
“About the men.”
She laughs, embarrassed, and even turns red.
“How many did you have?”
“I didn’t count them.”
“How many a day? Or didn’t you work as a prostitute??”
“I was a call girl. Those are girls who get hooked up by phone to
businessmen, diplomats, politicos, movie stars, and so on. But also
vice squad cops. They don’t pay.”
“I know what a call girl is. Keep talking.”
“Our madam is an ex-hooker—Madame Claude. Her office is on
Rue Lincoln in the Eighth Arrondissement. Everything goes through
her office, the calls, the appointments, the payments, everything. We
have nothing to do with any of it. She keeps thirty percent of the fee,
and we get the rest. I’ve saved a lot of money. You can live with me
now, wherever you like. If you want, I’ll keep hooking as long as you
say so. Are you furious at me?”
“No. But I don’t want you to continue. So how many guys did
you have a day?”
“It all depended. Three, four, five. Sometimes just one. Except
when I was having my period. I only do that with you. Once I had
eight johns in one evening, and once even fifteen—a whole party of
guys. Each one came two or three times. I think it added up to forty-
five or fifty. The next day I couldn’t get out of bed, much less walk.
But those were exceptions. On the average it was thirty to thirty-five a
week. I have a small memo book where I enter my appointments. I get
the date and time one week in advance.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
 Kinski Uncut 113

“ ‘Enjoy it’? That’s such a funny word. The more guys I had, the
more I needed it. After all, you weren’t around.”
“How much did you earn per guy?”
“The girls get between a hundred and a hundred and fifty francs.
Sometimes you get a tip. That doesn’t go through Madame Claude, of
course.”
“When did you have to meet the men?”
“Usually from three P.M. till midnight, according to how we got
booked. The evening appointments almost always include dinner.
But sometimes you get a john early in the morning because he has to
get to the airport.”
“How long does a session last?”
“One to one and a half hours. It depends on how much the cus­
tomer wants to spend or how much time he has. The time is precisely
scheduled before the meeting. There are also all-nighters and week­
enders. They cost a lot of money, partly because the john has the right
to hand the girl over to other men—business colleagues, friends—and
because the men take turns or fuck the girl simultaneously. One guy,
for instance, always orders all of Madame Claude’s girls at once. Or a
girl has to fuck with two, three, or more guys at the same time. That
costs a lot more, too.”
“How were you dressed? Like a whore?”
“Not like a streetwalker, if that’s what you mean. We have to be
dressed decently.”
“How?”
She opens her closet door.
“Look for yourself. Very normal, very middle-class. The skirt not
too short, not too tight. And we’re not allowed to use perfume; other­
wise the men’s clothes smell of it when they get home to their wives.
Our underwear is white and also quite normal. Not slutty. We have to
bare ourselves down there right away, in back and in front. It has to be
114 Klaus K inski

uncomplicated and not take any time. Unless the men like that. Nor­
mally we strip naked. The men, too.”
“Tell me about the men. What are they like?”
“They vary. Most of them are nice.”
“Do they also fuck with rubbers?”
“Almost never; I don’t like it. And most of the johns don’t want
to. They want to have the feeling they’re shooting into the uterus, they
imagine they’re knocking me up. Some of the men do want a con­
dom—maybe they’re scared of catching something. Now and then
I’ve put a condom on a guy’s dick; I always have a few handy. But that
was when I was doing the streets. Some wanna fuck right in a car.
Sometimes standing against a tree. Often it was dark and I could
only feel their cocks. With one guy I had to peel off the condom—he
couldn’t fuck in rubber and he got soft again.”
“Have you ever had V.D.?”
“No, not so often. Once—no, twice. You know, you recover
quickly. The clap, of course. We have to be examined twice a week.
Hopefully, no one’s had the syph.”
“Weren’t you worried about getting knocked up?”
“I’ve got an IUD. Otherwise I’d’ve gotten knocked up by you.”
“Did you always take the dick in your mouth?”
“You mean suck it?”
“Yeah.”
“Most guys want it.”
“Have you also worked in brothels?”
“Yeah. There were various houses they sent some of us to. But
only for two or three days at a time. Those were quickies. Sometimes I
still wasn’t done with one john, and the next guy was already in the
waiting room.”
“Did you recognize the men?”
“Not usually. But the girls say that some of the johns are high-
 Kinski Uncut 115

ranking politicians and police officials. Madame Claude pays us for

the cops so that we don’t have to do freebies. The cops reciprocate by
protecting Madame Claude’s organization. Aside from movie stars,
whom we recognize of course, all I know is that the shah of Iran gets
girls from Madame Claude whenever he’s in Paris. He was here just
two weeks ago. But I wasn’t included. You have to have worked with
Madame Claude for at least five years and have the necessary experi­
ence before you service the shah.”
“How old are the girls, on the average?”
“Very young. Most of them start at sixteen or seventeen. The
oldest is twenty-six, I think.”
“How’d you feel after servicing several men in one day?”
“I wasn’t satisfied even after five or more guys a day—I mean,
really satisfied. I was just a total wreck, I felt drugged, and I needed
more and more drugs. It’s different than it is with you; there’s no com­
parison. You wipe me out totally, I’m completely feeble, but I feel re­
deemed, happy. Often, at the end of the night or at the crack of dawn,
even before my first client, I dashed out into the street and looked for
men. I let each man screw me as long as he could. I didn’t want any in­
terval between men. Sometimes I lay awake at night and couldn’t
sleep because I was thinking that somewhere out there some horny,
raging hard-on is hunting a pussy like mine. And I drew a rag over my
naked body, looking for him so that he could fill my itching, burning
hole with his boiling lava. Whenever a car stopped, I first stuck my
head inside to see if his pants were bursting. If they were, I got in. If
not, I kept looking. Naturally I always demanded money. One guy
took me to a miserable, run-down hotel. I had to pay for the room. He
stank like a billy goat. He fucked me brutally five times in all positions
and then he didn’t pay, that sleazy bastard. I could have killed him.
“Sometimes I imagine being fucked by hundreds of men, thou­
sands. For instance, by men in the Foreign Legion, who haven’t seen a
116 K laus Kinski

woman for months. They’d have to set up a makeshift brothel, a huge

tent or a barracks, and the men would have to line up. Or on an air­
craft carrier, as the only prostitute for thousands of guys . . . ”
Those last few words are almost breathed, as if she were dream­
ing. In fact, she is as good as asleep while she twists and turns on top
of me like a young dog looking for the right position for going to sleep.
Then she curls up and cradles her face in my fly.
“Why are you doing all that?” I murmur very softly, afraid of wak­
ing her in case she’s already asleep.
“You ask stupid questions,” she mumbles. She crawls up my
body and licks me in my ear. “Every woman has her favorite dick.
You’re mine. Do you love me?”
“Yes.”

I fly to Munich to see Pola. Meanwhile Jasmin flies to Berlin to look

for an apartment. But by the time I arrive in Berlin, she’s dead. She
was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Clayallee; they were bringing
her to the hospital with a badly fractured skull and she died en route. I
could see her—she’s at the morgue—but I don’t go. I couldn’t take it.
I return to Paris and stay in the same room where Jasmin told me
about Madame Claude.
When I run out of money to pay the hotel bill, I sleep under the
bridges of the Seine. At first the clochards leave me alone, and I figure
they accept me. But then they change their minds about letting me
sleep near them. They drive me away, hurling rotten tomatoes at me.
It’s icy out. When I was with the clochards, I could warm up be­
cause they have small stoves under the bridge. Now I wander around
for a couple of days until I get so tired that I duck in somewhere and
fall into a deep sleep. . . .
When I wake up, I’m snowed in, and a métro is thundering past,
 Kinski Uncut 117

very close to my head. I don’t know how I got here. Even my brain is
frozen. It’s early in the morning and still dark. In the street a man
picks me up and takes me home. I tell him I only want to sleep, and he
doesn’t touch me even though we both sleep in his bed. Before going
out in the afternoon, he serves me café au lait with a baguette. Then I
wash and shave and dry out my clothes.
As I leave he asks me if he can help me out in some way. I tell him
I need the train fare to Marseilles. I want to sign up as a sailor on a
ship that’s going far away. Preferably to Japan or Australia or the Fiji
Islands. He gives me enough for a third-class railroad ticket and says I
can pay him back someday. I hop the night train for Marseilles.
There I head straight for the Arab market to hock my suit. I want
to use the money to buy sailor’s gear and get a hot meal for the rest.
The Arabs virtually yank the suit off my body and offer me the equiva­
lent of twenty marks. They’re crazy! My suit is almost new and cost
me six hundred marks! I try a pawnshop to ask what I could get for it.
But the shop hasn’t opened yet, and there’s an endless line outside.
By the time I get in, they’re closing up again. However, the creep at
the window offers me the same amount as the Arabs. So I go back to
the Arabs, make the deal, pick out work pants and a jacket at a
secondhand store, and have the Arab pay for them. Then I go to
a pissoir, where I change and get the wretched balance of the money.
I dash along the fences of the wharves, which are guarded by cops
ready to fire their machine guns. Eventually I’m five miles outside
Marseilles. I stop at a tavern which has rooms to sleep in. I eat French
fries and drink a glass of wine. Then I collapse on the bed.
From now on all I think about is finding a ship as soon as pos­
sible. It isn’t easy. You can’t enter the heavily guarded harbor without
special authorization, and the shipping agencies, which hire crews,
are overrun by unemployed sailors, who get into free-for-alls over
jobs. No one even glances at me, much less talks to me. I try British
118 K laus K inski

and American companies, but they hire only Brits or Americans. I try
to be a dockworker, lugging sacks with black Africans. I spend the
money on the hookers of Marseilles. These girls can’t be picky; they
fuck with men of all races from the four corners of the world and they
probably catch every conceivable kind of V.D. But I not only screw
them without a rubber, I also eat out their pussies. I know it’s crazy.
But I want to love them, I want them to feel that I love them and that I
need love. That I’m dying for love.
“You’ve got a mouth like a whore,” one of them says to me before
kissing me good-bye.
“I know.”
A trolley runs to my inn every forty minutes. But I prefer using the
money for fucking and walking the ten miles. I don’t care. Especially
when I go to my whores.

There’s no dock work for the moment, so I do odd jobs. I even work
for the sanitation department for a week.
I can’t keep body and soul together on the pittance I earn, most of
which I spend on women anyway. When I stop paying rent, the land­
lord gives me notice. My room isn’t really a room, it’s a windowless
concrete hole, smaller than a prison cell, with an iron bed on the con­
crete floor. But it costs money. I earn my food in his kitchen: Working
under supervision, I prepare and serve French fries, meat, salad, and
caramel custard for the workers and I scrub out the kitchen, plus the
whole goddamn stable with its shit-covered toilets, I chop mountains
of wood, and I lug wine vats. For all that, I receive salad and French
fries once a day. The rent is not included. I have to earn it somehow,
or else he’ll throw me out.
The men are all sulfur miners. Spaniards, Portuguese, Poles, and
Algerians, working in the sulfur mine near the inn. They fritter their
 Kinski Uncut 119

earnings away on food and booze. On their day off they down ten
Pernods by lunchtime. And each man washes down every meal with a
liter of wine. The drudgery in the mine will kill them all. They know
it; that’s why they don’t save any money. It’s not worth it. They wear
gas masks in the mine, but those aren’t much help—the men all croak
within a couple of years. One of my friends—the men who share their
Gauloises and their last few francs with me—is thirty-five but looks
sixty. He gives me a colorful Arab scarf, which I wear every day.
If there’s any leftover food, I don’t bring it to the kitchen, where I
normally eat. Instead, I devour it while cleaning up, or if it’s a piece of
meat I hide it under my sweater. If it’s French fries, I wrap them in a
newspaper and stick them in my pocket.
I write to Cocteau, asking for money. In Paris it didn’t occur to
me to look him up. He writes back:

My dearfriend,
I would share everything with you, . . . Unfortunately I
own nothing. I live off the generosity of others. I am ill and
already have one foot in the grave. I am sending you this
drawing; perhaps you can sell it.
Yourfriend,
Jean Cocteau

The envelope contains one of his typical drawings, my portrait from

memory. He’s given me the mouth of a black man and eyes like stars.
The miners will hardly buy the drawing from me.

The wind force is Beaufort 10. No one’s outdoors. I sit on a rock by

the sea, where I always watch the departing ships. The surf rages over
fifty feet high, and the tempest whips the briny spray into my face.
120 K laus K inski

The thunder brings down the heavens, and the lightning illuminates
me. I’ve never been so happy in all my life.

The landlord wants to force me to work in the sulfur mine. I refuse.

He kicks me out of the hole I spend my nights in, and now I sleep in a
shot-up bunker on the rocky coast.
I can’t look for ajob. A boil in my throat, caused by inflammation,
prevents me from working. The boil keeps growing; my throat closes
up completely; I can’t swallow, and I can barely breathe.
The miners bring me hot stones, which I place on my throat. At
night one worker always keeps watch. In the daytime I’m alone.
One of them takes me to a family—I believe they’re from Portugal.
They give me a pile of lemons. Thirty. I squeeze the juice right into
my throat, thirty lemons in a row. It doesn’t help; the acid only gives
me stomach cramps. Besides, I want to get away from these people.
They keep birds in cages. Once a year they open the cages and then
shoot down the birds as they fly to freedom. They kill them for sheer
pleasure.
Going to a doctor makes no sense because doctors always ask for
their fee up front, and none of the workers has any money until the
next payday. And I’d rather not go to a hospital, because I don’t know
if that fucking landlord has brought charges against me. I couldn’t
even give them a place of residence if they asked me, and I don’t want
the immigration police to deport me for vagabondage.
After passing the hat, the miners take me to a nearby physician,
who gives me a penicillin shot, which has to be paid for up front, cash
on the barrelhead.
But there’s no improvement. So I walk to Marseilles and look for
a specialist. I want to ask him to treat me gratis because I’m afraid I’ll
choke.
 Kinski Uncut 12 1

I scan the names on front doors, house by house, nameplate by

nameplate. Nobody can tell me where to find an ear-nose-and-throat
specialist.
I roam the streets till the afternoon. It always takes me several
minutes to swallow. The torment gets worse and worse.
At seven in the evening I find a specialist, but he’s closing up.
He’s already got his hat and coat on, but he’s very friendly. He checks
my throat and says he can operate for free. I’m to come back in the
morning. In the morning!
I hurry back to my bunker and spend the night with hot stones,
which burn my neck and my chin, but don’t help.
At night I sneak over to the inn. The dog, who knows me, doesn’t
bark. But he whimpers joyously, so loud that I have to hold my hands
over his mouth. I reach through a tiny broken pane in the rear kitchen
door and push back the bolt. In the kitchen I find a long, sharp knife.
If everything else goes amiss, I’ll operate on myself. I’ll try to slice into
the boil when I can’t breathe anymore.
At eight A.M. I walk back to Marseilles, with the long kitchen knife
under my jacket—just in case.
Today it takes me a lot longer to swallow. In Marseilles I go to the
German embassy. Unable to speak, I write on a slip of paper: “I have a
boil in my throat and urgently need an operation. Please give me the
necessary money, I have none.” I show them my passport, and they
give me three hundred marks.
One hour later I’m en route to the doctor. Again I absolutely have
to swallow. But I can’t. It’s beyond me. No matter how hard I try, I
simply can’t swallow. I hold on to a street light and think that this is
the end. I pull out the kitchen knife and stick it down my throat like a
sword swallower. And then it happens. The boil breaks! And I puke
half a liter of pus into the gutter. Now I’m rid of everything and my
pains are gone.
122 Klaus Kinski

The three hundred marks in my pocket could tide me over for a

while in Marseilles. I could move into fairly decent quarters, eat a hot
meal every day, and bide my time until I find a ship that’ll take me on.
But I’ve changed my plans. There’s no way I’ll sign up on a tanker
and get kicked around. I want to earn enough money to build my own
sailboat someday. Then I’ll sail away and never come back. So for
now I have to make movies.
I don’t go to the surgeon. I don’t go to anyone, not even my
whores.
I buy a ticket for Munich. The train is to leave at six P.M. At noon
I sit down in a good restaurant, take my sweet time making my selec­
tion, drink a whole bottle of red wine, leave a generous tip, and have a
nap. I’ve told the waiter to get me up only if I sleep past five P.M.

In Munich O. W. Fischer has mobilized everything to track me down

for the film Hanussen.
“I need your eyes,” he tells me.
Now that’s really no reason to hire an actor, as far as I’m con­
cerned. But I accept the part, which is better paid this time. After all,
I’m not making a movie in order to turn myself on.
I rent a modern apartment with a garbage disposal. The first thing
I throw into the garbage disposal is the Hanussen script. And then I
buy my first car—that is, I make a down payment and get behind the
wheel. It’s a used Cadillac Cabriolet.
At the Bavaria Studios building, one of the sweet young secre­
taries gets into my pearl-gray “sleigh,” and she can’t wait until we fi­
nally zoom off. Unfortunately it’s raining cats and dogs, and we have
to ride with the top up.
At a red light I step on the gas, as I always do at a red light.
A truck swerves in from the right; we crash into one another. The
 Kinski Uncut 123

Caddy’s heavy bumper bursts into three parts, which soar through the
air. Nothing’s happened to the trucker or his truck. He’s only
bumped his knee. The sweet steno and I reel out of the Caddy as if
we’d been driving an amusement-park car. The Caddy has to be
towed, so we take a cab to my pad.

“Last name. First name. Date of birth. Place of birth. Address . . .”

“It’s all in the file. All you have to do is read it.”
“I’m askingj><m. ”
That sadism again. I want to jump up. Rudolf Amesmaier pushes
me back on my courtroom chair.
“Fine. I’m Mr. So-and-So. Born on so-and-so. In So-and-So. I re­
side at so-and-so . . .”
“Marital status?”
“What’s this all about?”
“Are you married? Single? Divorced?”
“Divorced.”
“When did you marry?”
“I can’t recall.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“What’s that got to do with my Caddy?”
“Fm asking the questions here! Any police record?”
I turn to Amesmaier. “Do I have a record?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I turn to Amesmaier. “Why?”
“For insulting a government official and resisting arrest,” says
Amesmaier.
“For insulting a government official and resisting arrest.”
124 Klaus K inski

“Aha!”
“What do you mean, ;Aha!’?”
“If you talk out of turn again, you’ll receive the maximum penalty!”
“What crime have I committed? Nothing happened to the
trucker. My insurance’ll pay for the damage to his truck. My Caddy’s
totaled. I’m the only one who’s suffered!”
“You’re an asocial element! You think that because you make
movies and earn a lot of money you can act brutal and arrogant in traffic!”
“If you knew why I make movies, and if you knew why I was in
such a hurry on the day of the accident—”
“If you get impudent, I’ll lock you up!”
I turn to Amesmaier. “Can he lock me up!”
“Oh, bullshit,” says Amesmaier. “Stay seated and let him talk.”
“You know what? Give me the maximum penalty and lemme outa
here,” I say, disgusted.
Amermaier is crimson with agitation. I tell him that this asshole of
a judge makes me puke and that I’ll land in prison if I don’t get the
maximum penalty and get out of here.
“Counselor, did you hear what your client just said?”
“What?”
“He requested the maximum penalty. Right?”
“Yes, that’s right, but—”
“I’m finished,” the so-called judge breaks in, and packs up his stuff.
I get the maximum penalty. A ten-thousand-mark fine! All be­
cause I have no Caddy anymore. If I don’t pay the fine, I’ll have to go
to prison for three hundred days!

While I’m filming Hanussen, Laslo Benedek hires me for his movie
Kinder, Mütter und ein General (“Children, Mothers, and a General”).
In Hamburg, everyone in the movie business stays at the Hotel
 Kinski Uncut 125

Bellevue, but not me. I go to a small rooming house around the cor­
ner. At six A.M. I’m arrested in my bed. The cops would never have
figured out that I’m on their wanted list if I’d filled out the registration
form correcdy. Instead I wrote that I was born before the Christian
era, that I have neither a permanent residence nor money nor a pass­
port nor a job, and that I’m a whore. The landlady was unhappy with
my data and brought me a new registration blank when I was already
asleep. I put Chinese fantasy characters on the back. So she called the
prowl car, and they found my name on their wanted list.
The reason why I’m on the list is not the ten-thousand-mark fine
for the Caddy, but the old business about resisting arrest, which I’ve
long since forgotten.
I’m led off in handcuffs, thrown into a Black Maria with other
prisoners, and driven to the holding jail. There I get kicked into a cell.
In the morning they tell me, “Shut your trap,” then “Bend over,
pull your ass cheeks apart. Pull back your foreskin.” They take all ten
fingerprints. Photograph me with a number. Take my measurements.
Make me hand over my belt and shoelaces.
“Do you have fleas?” a skunk asks me, tossing a dirty, raggedy
blanket at my head. I’m supposed to cover myself with it.
“Not so far, you cockroach. But I’ll probably catch all the vermin
in the world if you don’t get the hell away from me.”
The blanket, which stinks of farts and sweat, drops to the floor,
and I kick it away.
Two days later Rudolf Amesmaier gets me out ofjail.
I move to the Hotel Prem, where one of the actresses, Ursula H.,
lives. I call her Uglymug. Uglymug is so ugly that I can only fuck her
in the dark—to avoid putting a towel over her face. But her body is so
young and firm and hot and horny that I think the Good Lord deliber­
ately forced that face on her to punish all the guys who fall only for a
pretty face.
126 K laus K inski

Today I’m incapable of fucking her. After catching bronchitis in

that medieval jail, I bought some codeine drops and swallowed the
whole bottle. When Uglymug comes into my room, I’m sitting in a
chair and I don’t even have the strength to move. I feel as if Uglymug
were floating into the room, running upside-down across the ceiling.
But she undresses all the same.
Two weeks later, when Uglymug leaves town, I go to Hamburg’s
red-light district, where the girls flaunt their wares in the dim reddish
light of the store windows. They straddle chairs or loll across sofas in
order to entice the men.
I window-shop, fascinated. The faces and bodies of the young
hookers turn into the faces and bodies of all the women I have loved in
my life. It’s like that whenever I embrace a woman: Her face and body
take on the shapes and expressions of the other women I have loved
or am yearning for, including women I don’t know but am sure to
encounter.
The girls in the store windows beckon to me. But I’m put off by
the sleazy remarks of the men thronging the windows. I can’t stand
anyone deriding the woman who’s about to become my beloved, and
so I keep walking.
The street itself is unlit, so I can stand, unrecognized, in a house
entrance or walk up and down if I avoid the clusters of men.
I sit down on the curbstone and fall asleep. When I wake up, the
day is dawning. The reddish lights in the store windows are switched
off. From a window one flight up an elderly prostitute calls to me, and
I climb the stairs to her place.
She talks a blue streak. I merely smile without answering. Not be­
cause she’s so old and used-up and I’m not the least bit excited, but
because my thoughts are elsewhere.
“You’re a papa’s boy with a rich dad and you came here on a
yacht, right?”
 Kinski Uncut 12 7

I nod. I don’t want to blast her dream of the wealthy young man
whose luxury steamer is moored in the Hamburg harbor.
“A guy like you ain’t gonna be a cheapskate.”
I shake my head. I’m uneasy about talking. If she keeps quizzing
me, I’ll have to lie. I’m always nervous about telling people I’m an ac­
tor. I’m sad to be here. But I don’t want to leave; I don’t want to hurt
her feelings.
She strips and waits for me to strip. I don’t because I’m not get­
ting stiff, so she opens my fly and takes out my dick. Then she slips a
condom over my dick, which still isn’t hard, and massages it with her
mouth. Then she soaps it up. Probably, I think, to lube it or disinfect
it in case the rubber slips off.
I lie down on my back, uninterested, and she straddles me. When
she starts riding me, she gasps randily and moans deceitfully, as hook­
ers often do to make ajohn think they’re reaching climax. The hookers
know it excites a guy, so he’ll come faster.
I’m extremely excited. Not because of her exaggerated and desul­
tory moaning and whimpering, or the way she says, “C’mon, baby,
give it to Mama. . . . Get it out. . . . I want all your juice.” But because
in reality she doesn’t dare hope for any guy’s horniness and because
she lost all interest in fucking long ago. Her moans are one long self­
derision. Her flesh is cold. She’s trembling. Her body is devastated.
Her boobs and her belly dangle like dead, alien creatures. The cel­
lulite on her thighs is piled up into shapeless mountains. Her withered
butt is pinched in as anxiously as a kicked puppy’s. Her long pussy
lips, which have been ground down by thousands of men, no longer
close in front of the gaping hole, which I could easily fist-fuck.
I’m overcome with pain and rage: Rage because this clown of love
has been tossed away. And pain because she has to keep turning her
tricks because she has no choice.
And suddenly I see her the way she probably used to be, like the
128 K laus K inski

young whores in the display windows of the neighboring houses.

When she could still be proud of herself because she knew that men
lusted for her and their dicks stood up at the mere sight of her. And
when her moans were still honest, because she felt the men inside
her and really reached orgasm. In an orgasm every woman believes
in love.
I throw her on her back, tear off the rubber, and shove my big,
hard dick so violently into her hole that she breaks into a sweat. Her
body quickly heats up, starts glowing. Her eyes under the half-shut
lids take on an absent, silvery radiance. Her abdomen thrusts toward
me as if her ovaries were fertile and she wanted to receive my semen.
When she yells in her orgasm, I come.
I give her more money than she would earn from ten men. I’d like
her to take the day oif.
“I’ll go shopping and then we’ll have breakfast, okay?” she says,
hurriedly covering herself so as not to destroy the illusion.
I thank her but point to my watch.
“I understand—your ship’s leaving, you have to get to the
harbor.”
I nod and kiss her good-bye on her old mouth.

Yorka never leaves my side. Ever since I recited Villon at Berlin’s

Kongresshalle, she’s been keeping her feverish Mongolian eyes glued
to me.
She lives on Olympische Strasse with her mother. I sleep there on
a lopsided couch, whose cushions are made up of something like
small rag sacks, and I baby-sit for Yorka’s children when she goes to
work. It’s on that sloping couch, which I roll down the instant I close
my eyes, that I hatch the plans for my later tours. And on that sloping
couch I first read Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales and “The Ballad
 Kinski Uncut 12 9

of Reading Gaol,” Tucholsky, Hauptmann’s Heretic ofSoana, Nietz­

sche, Brecht’s ballads, and Mayakovsky.
First I perform in Berlin movie houses. Then in the university au­
ditorium. Yorka sells the tickets in the campus restaurant, storing the
receipts in a cigar box, which she hands over to me before my perfor­
mance. Next I rent several theaters: the Komödie, the Volksbühne,
the large Kongresshalle, the Titania Palace, and the New Philhar­
monic.
Fritz Kortner comes farting along and signs me up for his movie
Sarajevo in Vienna. I’m to play the leader of the assassins, the guy
who throws the bomb. E.R. plays opposite me. We fuck nonstop
and so vehemently that I sleep even when I’m standing in front of
the camera and Kortner talks softly near me, because he thinks I’m
mulling over my lines. All in all he treats me a lot more cautiously
this time.
Anuschka, the wife of a millionaire and a member of the Russian
imperial family, has written me a letter offering to help me. I don’t
know what she means, but I can always use help. We make a date to
meet in Salzburg, where her husband owns a house. She picks me up
at the train station.

She bores her sharp fists into my armpit glands, my ribs, my groin;
she chews up my entire body, sticks her tongue into all the openings
that a human body has, and wants me to do likewise. Her animal
shrieks don’t stop until we move from Salzburg to Vienna.
Anuschka pays for everything. I have no money.
She gets no money from her husband unless she fucks him, so
when her reserves are used up we have absolutely no idea where we’re
gonna get dough in the future. For the time being we move from one
furnished apartment to the next, each more depressing than the last.
130 K laus K inski

Eventually she lodges me in a ramshackle old-age home, where I settle

in a room behind a secret door in the library while Anuschka steals
food from the pantry of her husband’s villa when he’s not home. (Her
little daughter and her mother-in-law also live there.)

When the Vienna Funeral Home celebrates its fiftieth birthday, it

treats its employees to a matinee. The agency asks me if I’d like to par­
ticipate in this variety program.
The agent wants me to recite a soliloquy from Franz Grillparzer’s
King Ottokar, in which the commander in chief or whoever is on a
battlefield, reeling off claptrap about Honor and Fatherland.
I buy a thin paperback of the play and read through the garbage
about the speech on the battlefield. At first I haven’t the foggiest clue
as to what it’s all about. I try to revamp the text in a coffeehouse, but
no matter how I twist and turn the nonsense, it remains battlefield dri­
vel about Honor and Fatherland.
“I can’t recite this sort of crap,” I tell the agent, “not even for the
funeral home.”
“Fine,” he says understanding^, “then suggest something else.”
I suggest Hamlet’s soliloquy with the skull in the graveyard; but
that’s too macabre for a funeral home.
“What about the Faust monologue?” I ask.
It’s too long, says the agent. I reply, “Just let me try it.”
At the matinee it’s all over in exactly fifty-seven seconds. Running
off the stage I sob the final verse—“The earth has me again”—and rake
in a pile of money.
The pallbearers and gravediggers in the auditorium of the Mozart
Hall still haven’t caught on that they’ve just heard the shortest Faust
monologue of all time.
The money tides me over briefly, but I can’t wait until the funeral
 Kinski Uncut 131

home’s seventy-fifth birthday. So I recite Villon. I use the Mozart

Hall, which I got to know through the funeral home. Then the
Beethoven Hall, and finally the huge Concert House Hall.
After Villon I recite Rimbaud. Then Villon again.
And then both on one program.
At the Meat Market Theater I play the title role in The King Is
Dying and at the Josefstadt Theater I play the cripple in The First
Legion.
Next I recite Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Heretic of Soana. This
play is about a young Catholic priest who is excommunicated because
he gives in to his love for a minor girl. As a result he is stoned. I want
to proclaim the story of this Italian cleric from the pulpit of St.
Stephen’s Cathedral. But they won’t let me.
Then it’s back to Villon, Rimbaud, and again Villon.
Anuschka’s husband keeps offering her money to return to him.
But Anuschka goes back to the villa solely to pilfer some food.
We move before the first month’s rent is due. Schönbrunn,
Goethe Monument, Kärntner Ring, Naschmarkt. I can’t stand it any­
where. When Anuschka is with her daughter I wander through Vi­
enna. It’s true what they say about the “sweet Viennese girls”:
They’re all sweet, from the teenagers to the married wives and moth­
ers and the hookers around Kärntner Ring.
Anuschka has become very suspicious because the hookers on
Kärntner Ring wave at me. Understandably, she’s now even less anx­
ious than before to leave me on my own. She’s made some kind of
arrangement with her husband, and she’s setting up an apartment on
Judengasse. He’s paying for it, but she wants to shack up with me
there.
For the time being I remain in the creepy pad at Naschmarkt, but
during the day I lie with the hookers in bushes and on green meadows
and I go out to Ottakring with them.
132 K laus K inski

O. W. Fischer, who has meanwhile learned that I’m knocking

about in Vienna, writes to Rott, the director of the Vienna Burg-
theater. Anuschka tells me that Rott is waiting to see me. He offers me
a five-year contract at the highest salary. He talks a blue streak, allows
me to choose my own plays, and says that he’ll gear the whole sea­
son’s program to my wishes. This is scary.
The first play is Goethe’s Tasso. It’s been scheduled for some
time now, and Rott gives me a free hand to interpret Tasso as I like.
All he asks is that I get in touch with the director, Raoul Aslan, and
explain my ideas to him.
Aslan, who invited me to his home, talks such hair-raising bullshit
that at first I don’t even notice his heavy hand on my thigh. When I
leave, his final words are: “So remember, Tasso is like a skier schuss-
ing downhill at sixty miles an hour!”
What’ve I gotten into!
Rott lets me have the rehearsal hall in the theater attic, where I
won’t be bothered by anyone for four weeks. The other actors never
turn up for rehearsals, so I soon prefer the chairs, which replace them
and keep their traps shut.
Rott has gotten into his head to present me to the public as Josef
Kainz’s successor. That’s why he wants me to don the original cos­
tume in which Kainz played Tasso; it’s now hanging on a wire dummy
at the theater museum. But the costume doesn’t fit me at all, even
though Kainz must have had more or less my build. Besides, it’s been
devoured by moths.
A new costume, a replica of the original, is tailored out of pure
silk, and a gilded dagger is made for me. Rott can throw around the
millions he gets every year from the Austrian government. He wastes
the money anyhow on his miserable productions, but in his treatment
of me money is no object.
His effort to present me as the new Kainz is so obsessive that he
 Kinski Uncut 13 3

sets up photo sessions between rehearsals, with me in costume. The

photographers drag me to the Kainz monument, to the Kainz bust in
the Burgtheater, to the Kainz portrait in the gallery, and to his tomb­
stone! It’s like advertising for Coca-Cola, I muse, except that I’m not
getting paid for it! I’m disgusted by this grave-robbing. The creeps at
the Burgtheater didn’t start licking Kainz’s ass until he had cancer and
didn’t have much time left.
At the dress rehearsal the other actors, who I have to perform
with for better or worse, come toddling in. Most of them are very con­
descending, and as Burgtheater veterans they don’t go out of their
way with the new kid on the block. I myself am extremely surprised to
be dealing with flesh-and-blood people, I’m so used to my chairs.
After the dress rehearsal Aslan wrings his hands. His dream of a
ski champion has faded forever.

The performance is a triumph for me. The spectators refuse to leave

and want me to stay in Vienna forever.
Kortner sends me a wire: “Please do Prince Heinz at the Munich
State Theater.”

Anuschka and I fly to Munich and rent a villa in Nymphenburg. Every

morning I ride the trolley to rehearsals. At night we fuck and have fist-
fights.
Anuschka slices her wrists with a razor in the middle of the street.
I bandage her hands with the handkerchief and take her home, where
we fuck and fight again.
On the day of the premiere a warrant is issued for my arrest. The
squad car is already en route. Once again it’s about some sort of debt
that I forgot to pay. Since I have no money left, and it’s a matter of
134 K laus K inski

several thousand marks, Kortner rings up the minister of justice to

cancel my arrest and then the minister of finance about the sum itself.
Rudolf Amesmaier puts in his two cents’ worth. He’s got a brilliant
idea: Every government, every German state, every city has a secret
slush fund for unprecedented emergencies. My case is one of those
emergencies, for no lead actor at a state theater has ever been arrested
on the day of a premiere. If the performances had to be canceled, the
financial damage to the state of Bavaria would be a lot greater than if
my debt were paid out of the slush fund. Amesmaier gets his way. The
slush fund covers my debt. In this way, the government pays the gov­
ernment with government money.

Anuschka and I return to Vienna. The apartment on Judengasse is

ready, and in the romantic garret we rest up from all the stress and
strain, which were worse for Anuschka than for me.
I have to go to Berlin for a movie. I realized long ago that I can’t
always pick and choose my movies, especially since I always need
money. It’s no use being selective. They’re all alike, and the lot of
them aren’t worth the effort. What choice do I have but to make the
best of this garbage?

Anuschka joins me for the next few films, but then my screwing
around gets the upper hand again—from the extras, whom I fuck in
the toilets and the dressing rooms, to the actresses, whom I screw next
door while Anuschka waits for me in our hotel room, to the hotel
maids, whom I poke in the bed I share with Anuschka. She returns to
Vienna.
In Berlin I rent an unfurnished six-room apartment on Uhland-
strasse. Yorka helps me whitewash the walls. The furniture is quickly
 Kinski Uncut 135

bought: a couple of beds, mattresses, a table, a chair, and some

kitchen implements.
As soon as the word gets out that I’ve got an apartment again, the
court bailiffs appear, like a plague of locusts. I hurl my only chair after
one of them on the stairs.
Yorka was right when she told me to buy the chair. It’s stable, and
I can use it again.
So long as Yorka doesn’t live with me, my pad becomes a real
bordello. Every guy I’ve ever met anywhere buzzes at night so he can
fuck here. Every one always brings a girl along. I don’t switch on the
light, so I don’t see their faces. In the darkness we swap girls and no
one knows who’s fucking who.
There’s an usherette at the Gloria Palace who kneels down next to
my seat during a screening and brings me best regards from her
friend, whom I’ve never even met. I have to take her to my brothel.
Unfortunately Yorka comes back from shopping with overflowing
bags—and catches the usherette and me with my pants down in the
middle of the room. We’re wedged into one another. Till now I’ve al­
ways at least spared Yorka the sight of me carrying on behind her
back. She drops her bags. Apples, oranges, carrots, and potatoes roll
up to our feet. The slippery whites of the shattered raw eggs splash
derisively across the floorboards, smearing Yorka’s shoes. After drop­
ping her bags, she dashes from the apartment.
For an instant the usherette and I stand there, petrified. Then her
abdomen again starts moving rhythmically, and I can’t help it: I take
in her thrusts and respond with harder and harder thrusts.
I want to fuck her, fuck her! But I don’t want to shoot inside her. I
want to save my come, go to Yorka, beg her for forgiveness, and shoot
inside her.
When I ring Yorka’s bell, her mother opens the door. Yorka has
taken a sleeping pill and is fast asleep. I take off my pants and shoot
136 K laus K inski

into her—shoot everything that I so violently held back with the

usherette.
Yorka is carrying my baby. She knows I can’t stay with her, and
she’s scared of being alone with two kids. I can’t prevent her from
having an abortion.

On the Ku’damm in Berlin I stand outside the glove store next to

Rollenhagen, a gourmet deli. I’m not planning to buy gloves. Upon
emerging from the deli, I ate up my salami outside the glove store.
Through the window I spotted a blond kitten. She was slipping a
glove over the proffered hand of a male shopper. I wipe my hands,
which smell of salami, on my jeans and enter the glove store.
While the kitten serves a customer, I have time to take a closer
look at her. She must be about seventeen. Her movements are timid
and graceful, but this little kitty-cat can’t hide the fact that she turns
into a tiger in bed. Her snug, worn skirt, which is too short, and her
tight, hand-knitted baby sweater, which she’s long since outgrown,
speak volumes. About the little tit balls, which quiver with every move
she makes as if they knew that they had to behave here . . . About the
shape of her small schoolgirl belly, which forms an S curve with her
bodacious butt. Her eyes are greenish-gray, like those of many cats.
Her flushed, bright-red lips are swollen and very slightly parted, like
those of a thirsty baby. That’s what her little twat must look like.
When she sees me, her face turns as bright red as her mouth. Her
eyes shoot into my balls.
After finishing with her customer, she turns to me.
“What kind of gloves are you looking for, sir?”
“Very tight ones. I don’t care about the color.”
I should have worded this differently, but it’s too late. For an in­
stant she stands there, indecisive, and I regret confusing her. As if re­
 Kinski Uncut 137

alizing that gloves are the farthest thing from my mind, she smiles and
lowers her eyes.
She slips a tight glove over my proffered hand while I prop my el­
bows on the counter and splay my fingers. First she pulls the entire
glove over my hand. Then she smooths out the leather on my fingers,
from the tips up, as if massaging them. Finger by finger.
I can feel her hot fingers through the thin leather as if there were
no glove. It’s as if her skin were on mine. And all the while, I keep
staring at her. She doesn’t return my gaze, but she seems to feel what I
feel, and this is probably the first time she’s massaged a shopper’s fin­
gers. Who knows what she’s thinking? As for me, I’m thinking that
my five fingers are five dicks that she’s massaging one after the other. I
can’t stand here forever with five stiff dicks.
“Would you like to come to my place? Live with me. Stay with
me? Give up these glove fittings?”
She still won’t look at me and she won’t stop massaging my
fingers.
“When?” she asks, barely audible.
“Immediately.”
From behind the curtain of the back room her boss emerges; she
looks like a toad.
“Are you satisfied, sir?” she asks, lurking like a madam.
“I’m satisfied with your salesgirl. I’ll take her along. Please pre­
pare her salary.”
The toad is dumbstruck. Before she can pull herself together,
Biggi and I are out of the store.
The toad won’t pay the salary because Biggi didn’t give proper
notice. But Biggi doesn’t need that pittance. I’ve signed up for several
tours, and Biggi will have anything she wants.
Biggi’s mother would worry if her daughter stayed out all night.
So we send her a wire:
138 K laus Kinski

AM WITH MY FUTURE HUSBAND STOP DON’T WORRY.

BIGGI

As soon as I let Biggi out of my arms, she takes care of the apartment.
So far we have no extra money, but Biggi grew up in modest circum­
stances and is thankful for every flower she buys at the market. Every­
thing she touches becomes beautiful, and soon, with just a few more
objects and furnishings, she’s transformed my bare white six-room
apartment into a romantic love nest.
Then I buy the barest necessary clothes for Biggi. Every rag she
picks out and tries on looks tailor-made for her. She never wants the
most expensive items, and she always asks how much everything
costs.
Now I start running amok with my tours. Amok, with no end in
sight. First Berlin, again the Sports Palace. Then Munich. Frankfurt.
Hamburg. Then all the other cities. A hundred times. A thousand
times.
Biggi is always with me. She never tires of taking care of every
bothersome bit of crap. I can’t because the performances drain every
last ounce of my strength. She’s in the audience every night. During
intermissions she comes into my dressing room and mops the sweat
off my face and body. She puts up with all my excesses, and her undy­
ing love helps me to endure the ruthless torture.
We travel by car; I’ve bought a Jaguar. By train. By air. We barely
sleep—we usually have to hit the road again the very same night. Dur­
ing my first tour I give one hundred and twenty performances in a
row. One weekend I perform five times. More and more sold-out
houses. And I want more and more money so that I can fritter away
more and more.
First I get five hundred marks for a performance. Then seven
 Kinski Uncut 139

hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand. We stay in the

most expensive hotels, the most luxurious suites, and we live like
royalty.
Biggi can have anything she likes—I’ll pay for it. But it doesn’t go
to her head. She remains as undemanding and down-to-earth as ever
and delights more in a single rose that I give her than in a pricey ring.
“How many days are there in a year?” I ask my agent.
“Three hundred and sixty-five. Why?”
“Then get me three hundred and sixty-five performances a year.”
He refuses to take part in my suicide, as he puts it.

Biggi is now in her ninth month and is still accompanying me. Even
though the lashing sleet is turning the autobahn into dangerous slush,
the speedometer needle in my Jaguar seldom shows less than 120
miles per hour. I can’t take my foot off the gas if we’re gonna make the
evening show. We zoom through all the warning and stop signs and
halt only to tank up.
Shortly before we reach Kiel a VW cuts straight in front of us from
the left lane without flashing its turn indicator. I try to slow down. We
skid, and the left side of the Jaguar is ripped by the steel fence of the
highway divider.
Keep going! Keep going!
By the time we arrive in Kiel, the spectators are in their seats,
waiting for the curtain to rise. As is, I dash onstage. After the perfor­
mance we hit the road again.
En route to Hamburg, where I’m supposed to cut some disks for
Deutsche Grammophon, we have another accident. When I try to
pass a truck the Jaguar skids sideways across a patch of ice. I manage
to regain control, but we’re so close to the truck’s trailer that I have to
swerve left, and we skid across to the wrong side. About a hundred
140 K laus K inski

and fifty yards ahead of us a car is shooting our way. I’d have time
enough to get back in the right lane—but a third car, which I haven’t
spotted, is racing in from a feeder road, closer and closer. I carefully
try to steer the Jaguar to my lane. But it doesn’t work. The third car is
zooming straight toward us. I have no choice—I tear the wheel to the
right. I’ve managed to balance the swing when the Jaguar skids out,
rear first. It whirls around twice on its own axis. I lose control; we
screech down a slope and turn over. The Jaguar is standing on
its head.
The backs of our seats are shattered, but we’re still belted in.
When I come to, I hear Biggi whimpering. The doors are jammed. I
manage to smash a window. I creep out and drag Biggi from the wreck
before the car explodes.
She can’t walk on one of her legs. She’s also in shock and stam­
mering confusedly. I try to calm her and take her in my bleeding arms.
The trunk door has sprung open and some of our valises have cata­
pulted out. But our coats are beyond help. I squeeze Biggi very tight
to shield her from the cutting cold.
Meanwhile other cars have stopped, and the passengers are hur­
rying over to help us. Somewhat later, policemen and firefighters
show up.
My arms are injured, and on my forehead is a lump the size of a
fist. Biggi has pulled herself together and can walk now. She’s unhurt.
The baby is kicking impatiently in her belly.
After the formalities are taken care of, a squad car drops us off in
the next village, where we hop a cab to Hamburg.
Once there, I complete five records while Biggi finally sleeps her
fill. Then I buy baby linen and a couple of baby shoes of light-blue kid
with white tips; I roll a gigantic wheeled bear in front of Biggi’s bed.
Our baby will ride the bear. That same evening we fly to Berlin.
Biggi’s contractions have begun. I take her to the hospital. She gives
 Kinski Uncut 141

birth that same night. It’s a girl. I name her Nastassja. That’s the
young woman in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot—the one who’s crazy about
Prince Myshkin.
The first night, I stay over in the hospital and sleep in Biggi’s
room. Then, after buying mountains of flowers, I go to Uhlandstrasse
and turn our love nest into a sea of blossoms. For now, Nastassja will
sleep in her perambulator. I got it from England. It’s got huge wheels
and it looks like a real carriage, pearl gray with a white cabriolet, like
our Jaguar, in which Nasstja has raced over ten thousand miles of au­
tobahn while inside Biggi’s belly.
Much as it pains me to leave Nasstja and Biggi alone, I have to hit
the trail again. I’ve got contracts to honor.
After another four and a half months I cancel the rest of my tour.
It’s a killer. Above all, I can’t spend so much time away from Biggi and
Nasstja.
We rent a villa on the edge of Grünewald. Seven rooms, three
baths, a guest toilet, a garage, and a huge garden with a sandbox for
Nasstja. The villa is a rococo pavilion with cupids on the roof and an
outdoor stairway that curves down into the garden with its blossom­
ing lilac and forsythia, roses and rhododendrons.
I clean out half a toy shop for Nasstja. I buy dresses and furs for
Biggi as well as jewelry and the most expensive perfumes. I order
custom-made suits, silk shirts, gloves, shoes, and even silk under­
pants. I order cambric bed linen with ruffles and lace, plus quilts and
pillows filled with the finest down.
Biggi and I play tennis, and I buy a horse for us.
The dining-room table, groaning under the weight of our food,
looks as if it came from a fairy-tale palace in the Arabian Nights. It takes
hours just to set and clear the flowers, the mounds of fruit, the most di­
verse wines, the liqueurs in gaudy carafes of polished crystal, the whole
roasts, the goose in any season, the venison, the marzipan, the candy.
142 K laus K inski

We dine off the finest Meissen porcelain with gold knives and
forks, and we drink from colorful beakers of polished crystal.
The urchin’s dream has become reality. But I don’t want any of it
anymore. I’ve long since stopped yearning for it. Besides, I know that
this idyllic happiness won’t last. I can’t go against my grain. Even
though I’m sick with groundless jealousy, I have a relapse of screwing
around—when up till now I haven’t cheated on Biggi even once.
It starts with a trainee from the store where I’ve bought baby
clothes for Nasstja. The girl delivers the huge package after the mid­
day closing time. Biggi is breast-feeding in the nursery. I open the
front door. The trainee is all dolled up in a very short, fashionable
dress, with intense, gluey, aggressive lipstick on her mouth. She can’t
be older than sixteen. I take the package and ask her to wait a moment
in the entrance hall while I dig up some cash for her tip.
When I return to the entrance hall, where a door leads directly
into the guest toilet, the girl eyeballs me as though expecting some­
thing other than the money, which she doesn’t even register as I hold
it out.
As if in a trance, I grab the girl’s pussy, shove her into the toilet,
and lock the door behind us.
It lasts at most fifteen minutes. Then I bring Biggi the package,
and we have Nasstja try on the little frocks all afternoon.
If Biggi snooped or had even the slightest suspicion that I cheat
on her, I wouldn’t feel such remorse. But Biggi trusts me so thor­
oughly that she never even asks where I’m going or why I often don’t
come home until close to dawn. I say, “I have to go out.” That suf­
fices for her. I myself can’t explain why I’m now stepping out on her
more and more often. I’m as horny for her as I was the first day. And
she likewise gets randier and randier the more frequently and shame­
lessly I fuck her.
I receive a letter with a huge coat-of-arms. A British countess is in­
 Kinski Uncut 143

quiring whether I’d be willing to recite the Hamlet soliloquies for her,
alone in her castle. Fee per soliloquy: ten thousand marks. She’d like
to come to Berlin to get my answer personally.
One week later she calls me up. We are to meet in the Tiergarten.
You never know. We take a long walk, and she rattles on about Ham­
let. She’s not pretty, nor does she turn me on particularly. If worse
came to worst, I could fuck her right in the Tiergarten. Then I wouldn’t
have to go to England, where the beer is as warm as piss and has no
head. Her Hamlet obsession is starting to get on my nerves.
It’s drizzling. I suggest that we take cover in the bushes to escape
the rain, and so we charge into a thicket. We find a place where
we can’t be seen from anywhere. I strip her naked and lay her out on
the damp soil; she’s embarrassed because she’s having her period. . . .
Long past nightfall I say I have to leave. She remains lying in the
bushes.
I get my bearings by the Victory Column; then I walk through
the rain to get rid of the smell that clings to me. I see a clock: It’s al­
ready midnight. I hail a cab.
Everyone’s asleep in our villa. When I’m about to disrobe in the
dressing room, I notice that my fly is smeared with blood. I sneak into
the kitchen and wash out the stains under a cold stream of water.
Then I hang up my pants with the wet part over the radiator. I crawl
into bed with Biggi and shoot a heavy load while she hugs me in her
sleep and spreads her legs.
Two weeks later Scotland Yard phones to ask if I know where the
countess is; they say that she hasn’t returned to England and that she
left my address behind. I tell them I don’t know her. That she did
plan to visit me but never called.
So the countess has vanished. What’s next?
Biggi believes she’s pregnant again. But she loses the embryo in
the toilet. She held her hand underneath, catching the embryo in a
144 K laus K inski

tissue and then shoAving it to me. It looks like a teensy white frog. Its
arms, legs, hands, and feet are almost developed. The head is recog­
nizable only by its shape, and the face has no contours. Two dark dots
the size of pinheads are visible where the eyes might be expected.
For a couple of days Biggi is very listless and dejected. Then she
recovers, and I try to take her mind off her terrible experience.

I’m supposed to do Ghosts with Anna Magnani. But we both have so

many movies scheduled that we can’t agree on a date.
Movies, movies, one after another. I don’t even read the scripts
anymore.

Der Rote Rausch (“The Red Intoxication”) is being shot in Vienna—

or rather, on the Hungarian border, some forty miles from the city.
But we live in Vienna. Anuschka lets us stay in her apartment on Ju­
dengasse. She loves Biggi and Nastassja—I’ve written to her about
them and sent her photos.
Nasstja is now almost a year old and she can stand in her crib. We
go to the park; she walks for the first time, holding my hand.
I spend most of my time on location, sometimes sleeping over in
the small border village if the roads are snowed in or I’m too tired to
drive back to Vienna.
But there’s a far more important reason why it’s getting harder
and harder for me to leave this one-horse town, which is famous for
the storks’ nests on its chimneys and for the wine, which gets every­
one drunk. My reason: Claudia. We have to swallow drops for our cir­
culation because between takes we slump in our chairs like two
cripples, unable even to eat. This is because, aside from acting, we do
nothing but fuck.
 Kinski Uncut 145

During the shooting that riffraff nearly burned me alive. I’m supposed
to head into the reeds; there, according to the script, I’m to die in the
flames. After pouring twenty gallons of gasoline into the reeds, they
ignite them. The wind shifts, and the flames sweep together in front of
me and behind me. I stamp through the ice crust on the shallow,
muddy water and leap in so as to soak my hair and clothes; then, low­
ering my head, I charge through the fiery wall like a bull. I fall several
times, cutting the veins of my lower arms on the reed stubble, which is
as sharp as knives. The blood shoots from my injuries.
“Marvelous,” some cattle driver in the crew bleats. This wretched
gang of killers doesn’t even have a Band-Aid, so I have to bandage my
veins with strips torn from my shirt.
That’s what a normal day is like in the biggest reed swamp in Eu­
rope. We can penetrate it only on vehicles with Caterpillar chains,
otherwise we’d sink right in.
But neither this penal servitude nor my bandaged arms prevent
me from spurting all my remaining energy into Claudia’s hole.
Claudia has to see the dentist in Vienna to have a molar pulled. So
that we won’t have to be apart for even one day, I pick up a hammer
and knock out one of my incisors. Now I have to visit the dentist too,
since I can’t be filmed with a gap in my teeth. So Claudia and I drive
back to Vienna.
It takes us a whole day to cover the forty miles because we turn off
into every side road for a fuck. In Vienna, I don’t go to Judengasse. In­
stead, Claudia and I stay at a hotel.
After visiting the dentist, we call up the production people and
tell them my tooth won’t be ready for three days, which is actually
true, while Claudia has to be treated for three days because the extrac­
tion of her molar left a huge hole.
146 Klaus Kinski

En route back to the hick border town, we interrupt our drive

more and more often. We move on only when we can’t fuck anymore.
With the onset of darkness we don’t waste our time searching, we sim­
ply park on some frozen land. We lock the car doors from the inside
and strip naked. . . . Covered with sweat, we’re tangled into one an­
other and Claudia is kicking her legs in her orgasms—when she acci­
dentally hits the car horn. A flashlight glares into the windows, which
are all steamed up from the heat of our bodies. Stark naked I get be­
hind the wheel and burn rubber so fast that the country cop has to
jump aside.
Claudia and I have a week off. But I can’t fuck her during
that week because her husband is visiting, and she has to let him
fuck her.

Together with Nasstja, Anuschka, and Anuschka’s daughter, Biggi

has taken off for the mountains by Mondsee. She rang me up, asking
me to join them. The superintendent has the keys to the apartment on
Judengasse. Since there’s no chance of Claudia’s getting away from
her husband, I make a date with Bärbel. She’ll be coming by tomor­
row morning at ten. Bärbel is another cunt in our movie, but I haven’t
managed to fuck her because of Claudia. In any case, I have to go by
way of Vienna.
While waiting for Bärbel, I pack a few things for my holidays in
the mountains. My train is leaving at 3:10 P.M. At ten A.M. on the dot
Bärbel is standing at the apartment door. Before I can even shut the
door she has already dropped her coat and her bag in the corridor and
has started undressing. While peeling down her panties, she hops like
a hare into the bedroom. She knows we’ve got only four hours to milk
ourselves dry.
Bärbel is one of those cock-gobbling broads you get a boner with
 Kinski Uncut 147

even if they’re all wrapped up and you can’t so much as sense their
shapes. She’s well nourished and as strong as a man. Plus, during the
past few weeks she’s been so horny she’s nearly burst.
Two twenty-five P.M. I’m all set to leave. We don’t even have time
to wash up. The wind blasting into the train and the cold snowy air at
Mondsee will blow Bärbel’s powerful smell out of my skin and hair.

They’re staying in a farmhouse, and when Nasstja sees me she comes

storming toward me. I lift her high above my head and whirl her
around until she’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe. The earth
is spinning underfoot, and we tumble to the ground. Next comes
Biggi with Anuschka and her daughter. Her daughter hugs me so tight
that I have to yank myself away so Biggi won’t get suspicious. The girl
keeps kissing me on the mouth with her wet lips and blabbering like a
wound-up doll. She’s extremely excited: “I love you. . . . I love
you. . . . I love you. . . .”
It’s fine with me, but not with Biggi. Anuschka smiles cunningly.

In Berlin I continue with Claudia. We shoot several movies in a row.

While filming at the C.C.C. Studios in Spandau, we drive over to the
Havel River during our lunch break. If there’s not much time, I peel
her panties down to just below her cheeks. She bends forward slightly
and clutches a tree so as to have a solid hold and respond to my
thrusts with her butt. If they don’t need us right after lunch, we go
deeper into the woods and undress.
When we film in Tempelhof, we drive back through the Grüne­
wald in the evening. Usually we fuck in the car.
My next flick with Claudia is shot in Hamburg. We drive there in
her car, and she calls for me at our villa.
148 K laus K inski

Biggi and I have had a fistfight. It’s the first time we’ve ever gotten
into such a ferocious brawl.
Ever since I met Claudia there’s been tension between me and
Biggi, and it’s gotten worse day by day. Now the tension explodes in
insults and even physical violence. I don’t think Biggi knows about
me and Claudia; in any case, she has no hard proof. But Biggi is often
sad and absent, which is not like her at all.
Claudia doesn’t come into the house; she’s been waiting in the car
for half an hour. Biggi’s eyes are swollen from crying, and she keeps
bursting into tears. I’m desperate and at a loss, while the woman I
cheat on her with and can’t detach myself from waits in the car outside
our front door. I can’t put off leaving, because we have to reach Ham­
burg by nightfall.
Once there, I refuse to stay at the Hotel Bellevue with Claudia; I
prefer the Prem. She takes offense and slams the car door so hard that
the window shatters.

We have weekends off, so we drive to Travemünde, a seaside resort.

When Claudia picks me on Friday evening, she’s dead drunk. I tell
her I’m going to drive. But she won’t hear of it.
On the highway to Travemünde, she does over a hundred miles
an hour. Her Mercedes won’t go any faster. She doesn’t even look at
the road; she keeps glassily gaping at me with raunchy eyes.
“Keep your eyes on the road. You’re drunk as it is.”
“Does it bother you that I’m drunk?”
“No, it bothers me that you’re drunk and doing a hundred and
ten.”
“Are you scared?”
“I’m not scared of anything. But I’d rather fuck you in
Travemünde than lie separated from you in a metal coffin.”
 Kinski Uncut 149

Her skirt has ridden up to her belly. When she catches me staring
at her thighs, she spreads her legs without removing her foot from the
gas pedal.

In Travemünde we try to get to the beach at least for a couple of hours

just to clear our lungs. But when Claudia, who’s not wearing panties,
spreads her legs in front of me in the beach chair, we head back to our
rooming house and don’t get out of bed until Monday morning.
En route back to Hamburg, where we’ll be heading straight for
the studio, Claudia suddenly has to take a leak. She stops the car,
thrusts her bare ass out the open door, and pisses. In the morning fog
the cars, switching on their brights, roll past her butt.

Der Rote Rausch has its premiere in Hamburg. The distributor has
invited Claudia and me as guests of honor, and we’re supposed
to take bows onstage after the screening. Next, an hour is sched­
uled for autographs. To endure this shit we get roaring drunk.
We’re sitting in our box during the screening, and Claudia, wear­
ing no undies, puts my hand on her bare pussy. She grunts and
squeals like a pig. I shoot even though I’m tanked, and I still have a
boner when we’re invited onstage. We haven’t even watched the
movie. We look as if we’re still fucking and we’re so weak we have
to lean on each other. My face is smeared with lipstick, and my legs
are buckling.
For the rest of the movie we’re doing in Hamburg I have to be on
a giant ocean liner in the harbor at night. I spend my breaks in the
ship’s toilet with a former Las Vegas chorine. Her pubic bone is as
highly arched as half a coconut, and the inside is completely hol­
lowed out.
150 K laus K inski

At nine A.M. I arrive at the hotel, where Claudia has been waiting
since eight to drive back to Berlin with me.
“Pussy pig” is all she says. Then we head back to Berlin.
Claudia is pregnant. Her husband can calculate that the baby
can’t be his.
Today I get together with Claudia for the last time. We want to try
not to see each other anymore.

The International Theater Festival in Munich. I’m not interested in

playing the stupid dauphin in Saint Joan, but I sign the contract any­
way. First, because I can see Pola again; second, because I’ll be well
paid; and third, because I’m scheduled to make a TV flick in Munich
at the same time.
While shooting, I make do with the script girl, who demonstrates
her bathing suits for me in her pad.
The rehearsals for Saint Joan are so mind-deadening that I avoid
them whenever I can. If I’m not rehearsing, the assistant director calls
in sick, and we fuck in Grünwald, wallowing in the damp humus like
wild boars.
During each performance of Saint Joan, I do whatever occurs to
me. This is the only way I can survive George Bernard Shaw’s lethal
boredom.

Biggi has come to Munich with Nasstja. I’ve rented a furnished apart­
ment on Ohmstrasse, right near the English Garden. We can get there
on foot. Pola can spend the night with me. This way I can see my dear
children at least when they’re asleep.
After the festival I have to cut some disks in Vienna. Biggi and
Nasstja remain in Munich.
 Kinski Uncut 151

During the recording sessions, which are slated to run till six A.M .,
I get fed up with talking alone into a mike surrounded by bare walls. I
have to have live people in front of me if I’m going to prostitute my feel­
ings. Besides, I’ve got a boner. At three-thirty A .M ., I break off.
“Turn the three big records into three small ones,” I say through
the mike. “You can count my advance against my next recordings.”

I have to go on tour again; my agents insist that I honor my contracts.

I tell them that I want to recite my modernized version of the New
Testament and the tour can start in one month. But the agents get
cold feet. They suggest a tour with my famous classical soliloquies. I
agree. I won’t read from a script and drone out the words like John
Gielgud on his American tour; instead I’ll act them out, and in cos­
tume to boot, and I’ll play each character myself. Then I put the pro­
gram together: Hamlet, Romeo, Othello, Franz and Karl Moor,
Tasso, Faust, Danton, Richard III, Melchtal, the Prince of Homburg.
I choose twenty soliloquies. For the intermezzos during the breaks
when I change costume, I decide on Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony,
the Pathétique. Length of my performance: about four hours.
The costumes are tried on in our villa. I memorize my lines in a
chair in the villa’s library. I stand up only to eat or piss; otherwise I
spend four weeks murmuring soundlessly to myself. All these solilo­
quies are full of outbursts, shrieks of despair, cries of joy. But I jeal­
ously hold back my energy and passion for the moment when I fritter
myself away for the spectators. During those four weeks I never pro­
nounce a single word audibly or hint at any movement. I know my
voice and also my expressive capabilities, which have infinite range.
The rest will come from instinct, from the situation, from the shock of
the living moment.
During those four weeks of intense mental work and silence,
152 K laus K inski

which I create around myself and which can be disrupted by the

slightest and most distant noise, I am so irritable that Biggi and
Nasstja suffer from it. But they’re deliriously happy to finally have me
back home, and even Nasstja, who’s only three and a half, is so under­
standing and considerate that I’m ashamed and wish that so-called art
would go fuck itself. More than ever before, Biggi devotes her entire
life to supporting me with her boundless love in any way she can and
keeping any possible disturbance at bay.
Finally the big day comes. For now, a hundred performances are
scheduled in the largest theaters, arenas, and stadiums of eighty cities.
Next there’ll be a second and third tour through Europe, Ameri­
ca, Australia, Asia, and Africa.
My team is made up of a sound and lighting technician, a dresser
who doubles as my secretary, a chauffeur, and two bodyguards. The
premiere will take place at Berlin’s Sports Palace.

My debut runs for six hours. The tumult of the jubilant and shrieking
audience rages for over an hour, and after the performance they keep
begging for encores and absolutely refuse to go home. This tour is the
hardest I’ve ever done, but it’s also my greatest triumph.

Frankfurt. On the front page of a daily gazette I find a half-page full-

figure photo of me as Hamlet—and next to me the full-figure photo of
a breathtaking, naked exotic dancer. She works at a nightclub, strip­
ping to my Villon record, Pm Just So Crazy for Your Strawberry Lips.
Finally the kind of honor I deserve!
After the performance I stroll through Frankfurt’s red-light dis­
trict near the main railroad station. The hookers want me to auto­
graph their tits and also their panties—right over their cunts. But I
 Kinski Uncut 153

have to save my strength, and not only for performing. A girl has writ­
ten me care of the Hotel Frankfurter Hof, asking to meet me. She goes
to high school, studies classical ballet, and has announced that she’ll
come by at midnight tomorrow because she’ll be seeing her mother off
at the station at eleven-thirty.
Without even knowing what she looks like, I’m obsessed with the
thought of drilling this impatient swan. I go to bed and don’t get up
till the afternoon.
After the performance, I get into my car, sweaty as I am, and race
over to my hotel. A quick shower; then I order raw egg yolks with
honey and chain-smoke with my eyes glued to the clock. I listen to
every sound that comes from the door.
Midnight. The doorbell rings. I almost fall on my face before
yanking open the door. She’s got chestnut hair flooding down to her
hips. Her girlish face is pale. In it two black eyes glow, fringed by
long, black, silky lashes; her mouth is like a burst wound. She walks
on high-heeled shoes, wide-legged, like all ballerinas—which makes
her even more aggressive.
I unbutton her blouse. Her pointed, girlish tits are like boils,
and so hot. I pull her to the bed and start worshipping her. . . . But
now the phone rings. The hotel manager orders me to send away my
visitor!
I buzz my assistant, who’s two doors away, and tell him I’ll be in
touch. Then the swan and I pack the barest necessities.
When we enter the hallway, two house dicks are posted at each
end of the long corridor.
It’s not easy finding a hotel, because my swan doesn’t have any
I.D. on her. Then I think of the hotel at the railroad station, where
I’ve already stayed; the personnel, like staffs everywhere, will remem­
ber me because of my tips. And sure enough, at the reception desk
they don’t even ask to see my “wife’s” papers. The night clerk, whom
154 Klaus Kinski

I give a hundred marks, asks, “Do you have any special wishes,
madam?” I signal this moron to hold his tongue.
I admire everything about her. For a long time. As if I’d never
seen a naked girl before. And I really feel that way; I rediscover every­
thing. Undressing the swan takes an hour. I want to relish it all. Before
peeling down her panties I wait and wait. . . .
I touch the shapes of the vaginal lips, which are protruding
through the thin cotton. She has high, solid tits. Sweat oozes out of
her pores and runs down from her armpits and her ass crack. I walk
around her, lie down on the carpet, view her from below, tell her to
walk to and fro over me. Heat slams toward me, as if from a kiln. A
tremor passes through the swan’s body.
I’m spellbound. She lies down on the bed without throwing back
the covers. She’s feverish. . . .

Hamburg. Because of me the spectators get into a bloody free-for-all.

Five squad cars surround the Theater am Besenbinderhof. Collin, the
producer, weeps backstage.
“Be happy that people are fighting over me,” I say, laughing.
“Not even Jesus was loved by everyone.”
After the performance the shitheads come into my dressing room
and ask me whether I want to leave the theater through the back exit.
Not on your life! As we drive out of the courtyard, some girls break
through the barricade and cover the closed windows of my car with
kisses.
And so it goes for another ninety-nine performances. Excited,
agitated, jubilant, fistfighting, hysterically shrieking, weeping
people everywhere, most of them loving me. Yes! They love me.
Because, like nobody else in the world, I unabashedly expose my
feelings to them, thereby releasing their feelings. The few who
 Kinski Uncut 155

don’t love me hate me because of their liberated feelings, which

blind them.
The final performance takes place in Vienna’s Grosse Stadthalle.
Eight thousand spectators. Afterward a court bailiff frisks my pockets
in my dressing room. Who knows who wants money from me now. I
don’t even ask him. I eighty-six him.

Pakistan and India. And also my first Italian movie. Biggi wants to re­
main in Berlin with Nasstja. Magde is now staying with us temporar­
ily; she keeps house and takes care of Nasstja, whom she idolizes.
I get vaccinated at the tropical medicine institute and fly alone to
Rome, where the Italian crew is waiting for me. That same day we hop
a Pakistani plane to our first stop, Karachi.
Flavio, the movie’s costume designer, has billeted himself at my
right side on the endless flight. Scarcely have the “No Smoking” and
“Fasten Your Seat Belts” signs faded when he grabs my thigh. I don’t
want to put him off; he’s very nice. But I feel hot and queasy, and I
can’t let his thick, steamy, two-pound paw remain on my thigh all the
way to Karachi. Besides, it wouldn’t be enough for him.
I stand up as often as I can, and soon I’m eyeballing a slender but
big-assed Pakistani stewardess. Whenever I squeeze past the canteen
on the way to the toilet, my eyes insistently feel her up from head to
toe. From my seat I watch her every movement. I summon her with
the overhead light signal, racking my brain for an excuse, and I talk
sofdy so that she has to lean over to hear me. My arm dangles into the
narrow aisle, “accidentally” grazing her calves whenever she walks by.
If I spot her at the end of the aisle, I get up to run into her in a place
where she can’t step in front of a seat to avoid me. Instead, she has to
squeeze past me. In a word, she doesn’t have another calm moment.
She certainly gets the picture. She must know what I want before the
156 Klaus Kinski

plane lands in Karachi. I can’t tell whether that’s why she smiles, or
whether smiling is part of her charm. In any case, her smiles grow
more and more alluring the more shameless I act.
Night. Everyone’s asleep. They’re wearing black blindfolds and
slippers. The illumination is reduced to the minimum of a few emer­
gency lights. Flavio has given up trying to fondle me and is snoring in
his uncomfortable seat. And all the stewardesses but one are fast
asleep. All but one. Except that I can’t find her. I walk up and down
the aisle, leaning over the sleeping girls to make sure I don’t wake the
wrong one. My stewardess is not among the sleepers. The aisle is
empty. So she can only be in the cockpit or in the toilet. First the toi­
lets. The two facingjohns in the stern are empty.
I remove my shoes to avoid making any noise as I reel down the
long aisle toward the cockpit, where the two first-class toilets are lo­
cated. The right-hand one is vacant. On the door of the left-hand one
the sign shifts from “Occupied” to “Vacant.” But the door doesn’t
open. I don’t know what shoots through my head during these sec­
onds, or perhaps they’re only tenths or only hundredths of seconds.
I open the door and squeeze inside. And before the stewardess can
turn toward me, the door snaps shut, and I bolt it. Now the sign says
“Occupied.”
She doesn’t seem particularly surprised. She merely trembles
slightly and peers deep into my eyes, which, with Indian eyes, practi­
cally amounts to fornication. In a patch of turbulence, the plane
lurches leftward; our bodies press together, and I’m nearly lying on
top of her.
I’m almost dazed by the animal stench of piss in the tiny john,
which even a single person can barely endure. It’s not easy stripping
her. The PIA stewardesses wear shoe-length trousers, and over the
trousers a sort of frock that reaches past their thighs. She can do a
better job of unfastening it than I can. She opens her trousers and
 Kinski Uncut 157

climbs out of them. Then she leans way down to the toilet seat and
reaches over her shoulder to unzip the dress. I do it for her. She
straightens up; I pull up her dress until she can reach it with her
crossed arms, and she draws it over her head with a single supple
but impatient yank. Now she helps me strip; by now I’m virtually in­
toxicated by her dark, heavy breasts with their huge, almost black
areolae, her dark abdomen, and the smell of her even darker
crotch.
I trample on my pants, rip my buttoned shirt off my body so hard
that the buttons fly against the steel sink and into the toilet bowl,
sounding just like dried peas. Another patch of turbulence tips the
plane rightward and throws her body against mine, which is pressed
against the door.
My dick is so hard that the collision hurts me. She reacts faster
than I can moan. Instead of naturally clinging to my chest or shoul­
ders, she cups her hands around my dick and my nuts to shield them
against further collisions. The plane balances out again, and a Pak­
istani paradise opens up. . . .

When she hands me and Flavio our breakfast trays, she writes down
her Karachi address in neat capitals. But I can’t use it. We’ve got only
two hours here. We switch to a twin-engine machine and fly a tortur­
ous eight hours through the foothills of the Himalayas until we reach
our first location, Lahore. For two hours the plane can’t land because
a cyclone is raging directly over the airport. The pilot keeps trying
over and over again to nose-dive out of the suction. By the time we
start to land, the cabin is full of puke. There’s no air-conditioning,
and you have to have a totally empty stomach, as I do, to keep from
throwing up.
As usual, I hurry to get rid of the others. After I dump my baggage
158 K laus K inski

in my hotel room, a greasy cabdriver in front of the hotel talks to me. I

know what he’s after, and all I say is “Show me the way!”
The Italian physician who takes care of our production crew has
pressed a tiny bottle into my hand, ordering me to take a tablet every
day for cholera. Just before our arrival an epidemic raged, taking five
thousand lives. I pop a pill in my mouth and wash it down with some
saliva. The most recent smallpox epidemic claimed fifteen thousand
victims. But even though the vaccine doesn’t necessarily ward off in­
fection, I’ve got other things to worry about now.
The cab makes its way through unpaved, muddy streets and
roads, through craterlike holes, ditches, and gutters. The ancient
American Buick, so stiff with filth that your hand practically sticks
to the plastic-covered seat if you touch it, knocks me from side to
side. When no more houses and no more cars are to be seen any­
where, and only a camel caravan is visible with hungry eagles cir­
cling above it, and the electric sun is frozen in the green glaciers of
the Himalayas, I ask the cabby why we have to drive so far to find a
hooker.
“Special,” he says in English, grinning into the rearview mirror
and exposing an enormous gold tooth. He steers toward a lone, half-
completed brick house. “I waiting,” says Gold Tooth after stopping
his jalopy, and I hope my suffering is over for the next few hours. I
draw the pungently cool evening air deep into my lungs.
A door opens in the brick dump, and a young female giant
bends forward in the door frame. She has to bend because she’s
truly gigantic—almost seven feet tall, and as broad as a heavyweight
boxer.
Her stiff, horizontal tits are as huge as udders. Her arms are as
strong as my thighs. Her hands could easily strangle me. Her
strangely dark-blond hair, which reaches as far as her butt crack, is
woven into a single braid as thick as a python. She’s got the hips
 Kinski Uncut 159

and ass cheeks of a young mare. I can circle her thighs only with
both arms. She must wear size fourteen shoes. Her pussy is as big
as my head.
Everything is perfectly proportioned and utterly harmonious.
As in a breathtaking mammoth statue by Maillol. She’s simply a
giantess.
Her skin is tanned but not dark, and as taut and healthy as a peas­
ant girl’s. Her face is likewise rustic, but not crude—it’s beautiful. Nei­
ther her face nor her body indicates that she’s a prostitute. She has a
naive, dreamy expression. She smiles timidly. Gold Tooth is right:
She’s special.
There is nothing calculating about her caresses. She’s in no
hurry. As if time has stood still. As if time didn’t exist—only love.
Now I know. I didn’t come to this country to make some stupid
movie and get rid of my semen in every spare moment. I came here to
give myself to this love giantess and have her drain me of my very last
drop of energy. Her Indian eyes are feverish with sensuality. But she
waits gently and patiently until she knows my desires. We communi­
cate by smiling, by nodding or shaking our heads, by the slight pres­
sure of my limbs, by my hands, which indicate the positions I want.
She moves lightly, intent on distributing her weight so as not to
crush me.
First we lie facing each other. I gobble her tits. Her tongue. I
squash her lips with kisses, open them, push them up and down, and
lick her huge, sharp, snowy teeth, which bruise my face, my throat,
my body. I lick her paws, I lick every single finger. Her feet, her toes.
She turns on her side and lifts one thigh, and I fall furiously upon
her. Her hole is nowhere as gigantic as I’ve assumed from her overall
size. Her pussy muscles close tight around my dick. Never before has
a cunt milked me so rigorously and yet so tenderly. While she prays in
her native language with a grateful and loving smile, I dip my face into
160 K laus K inski

her streaming fruit, which she holds out to me like an overflowing

bowl, and slake my thirst.
After she’s nourished me, restoring my strength, I get out of bed
and signal her to join me in front of the mirror. By grazing her inner
thighs, I make it clear that she should spread her legs. I tap her on the
shoulder, and she understands that she has to bend forward. She
sticks out her ass without being told and props her arms on her upper
thighs as if playing leapfrog. Except that she pulls in the small of her
back.
Even though she’s bent over, the giantess’s back is as high as that
of a fully grown horse. Now I benefit from the Cossacks’ lessons:
They taught me how to jump on a horse without stirrups or saddle
just by grabbing its mane. I clutch her braid, and I’m on top of her in
one fell swoop. She hasn’t budged. I mustn’t slip no matter what, for
my spread legs, which barely envelop her hips, are high above the
floor. If I slide down, I’ll have to repeat my leap every time.
I hold on to her strong braid with both hands and ride her like a
jockey. She trembles. Her flanks quake like those of a thoroughbred.
Not because I’m riding her, but because she’s having such powerful
orgasms. I lie flat on her back—this is the end spurt—but my abdomen
is working furiously. Goal! I bite into her braid and twitch on her
trembling ass cheeks.
I’ve fallen asleep on her back. When I open my eyes, she’s still in
the same position, bent over at the mirror. Once again we gallop down
the course. Then I glide down to the floor.
I pay the cabby. Under the rising white sun, the old Buick, in
which you get stuck to the filth-caked, plastic-covered seats, moves
away from the stacked diamonds of the Himalayan glaciers, which
shimmer wanly in the white sky. Hungry eagles circle overhead, and a
camel caravan heads our way. And from the brick block a gigantic
hand waves good-bye.
 Kinski Uncut 161

The shooting is indescribable. I’m supposed to play a fanatical Indian

ringleader who stirs up the masses against the British. For that reason,
a makeup man—if you can call him that—paints me with a chocolate-
colored solution and glues a Santa beard to my face. This morning
procedure takes hours. Next Flavio puts a kind of white angel shirt
over my naked body, and the cloth tortures me like flesh-eating ants.
Which induces Flavio to touch all parts of me between the skin and
the fabric. Then he ties a gold sash around my waist. He also wraps
the turban, which makes the Indians shake their heads in pity.
Since I haven’t read the script—no one’s given me one—and can’t
understand the eternally screaming director’s Italian, all I do is try to
shield myself from the clouds of dust that swaddle us from morning
to evening. The infernal heat burns out your innards. There’s nothing
to drink but boiled water. Boiled because of the threat of disease. A
meal comes out of a package wrapped in greasy, filthy paper. I never
unwrap it. If someone does open a package it instantly turns black
with flies. All you can do is hurl the package as far away as possible.
It’s best not even to take it.
I can’t find any peace in the hotel. First, because the heat prevents
me from breathing and sleeping (even the ceiling fan produces only an
earsplitting noise but no breeze), and second and foremost, because
my mind is haunted by the giantess.
I can’t locate the cabby who drove me to her. I can’t even recall
his face. The gold tooth isn’t much of a lead, since every cabby has
one. I ask them about the giantess, but no one knows a woman as big
as I describe her.
My blood seethes, I have no choice. I let the taxis take me wher­
ever they like. Empty, filthy, spit-ridden, pissed-up, shit-smeared
hovels, where pockmarked girls are brought to me from brothels;
162 Klaus K inski

labyrinthine courtyards behind high walls, where I’m locked in so I

won’t try to split without paying, and where I grope my way in the
darkness through low clay huts and stumble over female bodies lying
on the ground. I fuck away furiously without ever seeing them. But
even this dangerous whoring, which doesn’t even bring me a dose of
the clap, much less cholera or smallpox, can’t console me for the loss
of the giantess.

During the final shooting, which we do in some sort of catacombs in

Rome, I still haven’t forgotten the giantess. I have to complete the
scene in which I rouse the Indian populace against the British. At the
Indian temple I shrieked out a text without knowing what I was
shrieking. This time the camera is far away, and the moronic director
is content if I gesticulate wildly and yell whatever I like. I scream:
“Grab a hammer and smash the mouths of all the riffraff. Just let
me get back to my giantess!”

It’s only my second day back in Berlin when I get a call from the dis­
tributor with whom I have a contract: “You have to fly to Mexico this
weekend to do a drag-racing movie.”
“I’ll go right out and buy a Spanish dictionary!” I shout back—
and I can already hear the predatory roaring of Ferrari engines.
That was yesterday. Today these bunglers buzz me back: “The
Mexican flick’s been put off. You have to get to Madrid in two days to
shoot a Western.”
I know I’m a prostitute. So I fly to Madrid.
On the first day of shooting I refuse to put on a lice-ridden cow­
boy hat with a rotting sweatband. Let them send their rags to the dry
cleaner, if you please. The Spanish director—the people who call
 Kinski Uncut 163

themselves directors nowadays!—flips out and orders me to put the

hat on.
“You can drink water from my toilet bowl,” I say, and skedaddle.
But things don’t go that smoothly. A contract with a distributor is
sort of like a contract with a pimp. You can’t just up and vanish. And
pouting doesn’t help. So to punish me they send me out to make a
flick in Prague, the “Golden City.”
I don’t see any gold, but I do see girls who are famous for their
fucking! So first I have to get a car. I order a new Jaguar from Munich.
That takes care of that!
When the secretary at the hotel desk takes her lunch break, we go
to the nearby park. The bushes are in full blossom, and we don’t even
have to be careful. The Czech girls all live up to their reputation. Un­
fortunately, the secretary’s late getting back, and the hotel manager
demands that I clear out on the spot. I move into another dump across
the street.
Next comes Tonya, an actress in the film. She’s seventeen, with
gold curls, and she’s sort of the Czech Shirley Temple. The Commies
have confiscated her passport because she did secret nude photos for
Playboy. I have to smuggle her into the hotel. Not that the Commie
snoops have anything against fucking. They’re only opposed to hav­
ing people who don’t live in the hotel fuck in the hotel.
There’s really nothing wrong with Tonya, except that she never
lets out a peep when she climaxes. We might’ve stayed together for
the entire production if my other costar hadn’t shown up: Beatrice
Benito, part French and part Italian. A vampire who sucks out a man’s
marrow, if not his blood. She calls me up and asks why I don’t live in
the same hotel as she. I sarcastically reply, “For political reasons.”
She tells me to come to her. Tonya, sitting next to me on the bed,
doesn’t understand because I’m speaking French with Beatrice. I
tell Tonya that I have to meet some friends who are gonna be in
164 Klaus K inski

Prague only for the day, and I promise her I’ll be at the hotel punctu­
ally in the morning in order to take her along to the studio.
Pm supposed to meet Beatrice in her hotel lobby because
there’s a police agent posted at the elevator and another at the stairs;
everyone has to show a room key. Beatrice sort of prostitutes her­
self in front of the stairway sentry: Cunningly dressed, she struts up
and down the carpet runner from the reception desk to the dining
room, as if she were streetwalking, and she sticks out her bodacious
ass. Next she drops her Italian mini-purse. The stairway sentry duti­
fully bends over, turning crimson. At that instant, I race up the
steps. . . .

Beatrice is still lying on her belly. I’ve fucked her all night in that
position, and she shrieked so loud, at the top of her lungs, by the open
window that the police patrol in the street sent the night clerk up to
her room. Through the locked door he asked her what was wrong.
Was she hurt? “I bumped into something,” she replied, keeping her
wits about her.
Beatrice has to go to the studio, as I do, and naturally she
wants me to drive her. I ask her what we should do with Tonya, since
my Jaguar can only seat two. But Beatrice doesn’t give two hoots
about Tonya. I tell Beatrice we have to hurry. Tonya may turn up
late, and we could then get away before she arrives. But Beatrice
deliberately stalls. She knows quite well that I would never swap her
for T onya.
When Beatrice and I arrive on time for my date with Tonya,
and Beatrice gets into the car, Tonya scoots out from behind the
kiosk on the other side of the street and tries to drag her out of
the Jaguar by her hair. But Beatrice won’t give up her seat; she like­
wise yanks Tonya’s hair, scratches, spits, kicks, and inundates her
 Kinski Uncut 165

with a flood of special French and Italian expressions, the hottest

possible.
Tonya slaps me and dashes away in tears.
That same day, Beatrice transfers to my hotel. Anything I don’t
know she teaches me, anything she doesn’t know I teach her. She no
longer wears undies, because I won’t let her. Never again. Not in the
street. Not at the studio. Not in the restaurant. Nowhere. When we’re
not shooting we stay in bed or in the bathroom.

I have to go to Yugoslavia to shoot some lousy Western. The flick in

Prague still has a long way to go, but since both movies are being done
by the same distributors, they came up with the idea. Beatrice is furi­
ous because she can’t come along. She still has some scenes to shoot
without me in Prague.
In Yugoslavia I try to telephone Beatrice. But that’s impossible in
this hick country. I spend fourteen, sixteen, twenty hours waiting for a
connection, and when it finally goes through we can’t understand
each other, or the line goes dead before we even start. The next
hookup takes another fourteen, sixteen, twenty hours.
One week later I return to Prague. Beatrice picks me up at the air­
port and we race into bed.
One more week and I have to return to Yugoslavia. Again I try to
call her up. Again we have to wait fourteen, sixteen, twenty hours for a
connection, and again we can’t manage to talk.
After yet another week I’m back in Prague. Again Beatrice picks
me up at the airport. Once again we race directly into bed, and we
don’t get up until the next day of shooting and we never order any
food.
I haven’t called Biggi even once from Prague, though it’s not that
difficult to get through. When she telephones and reproaches me, I
166 K laus K inski

lie, telling her that I’ve been shooting day and night. I’m powerless
against Beatrice, who binds me closer and closer every day. She’s like­
wise nuts about me and begs me to fly to Rome with her and stay with
her. I promise I will.
Fellini wants me for his next movie and summons me to Rome. I
tell Beatrice to fly on ahead while I drive the Jaguar back to Berlin. I
spend one day in Munich to hug Pola, and I visit Erika.
In Berlin, Biggi and Nasstja spend twenty-four hours with me,
delirious about my return, until I leave for Rome. I’m haunted by
Beatrice.
Biggi makes me promise to take her and Nasstja along to Yu­
goslavia, where I still have five weeks of shooting left. I can’t refuse
her. But I don’t know what’s going to happen.

In Rome Beatrice drives me to see Fellini, who’s her good friend.

Fellini circles me for hours on end, speaking French because I don’t
know Italian. He starts getting on my nerves. How important it all is! I
never take my eyes off Beatrice for even a second and I whisper to her
that we should go.
Beatrice has a huge, sunny apartment in Cassia Antica, with all of
Rome at the foot of the gigantic terraces. Her maid is used to her long-
drawn-out shrieks. She walks in without knocking, taps us on the
shoulders even when we’re in the midst of climaxing, and says,
“Soup’s on.”
Beatrice loves to dress me. She buys me all sorts of Italian jerseys,
swim trunks, pants, shirts, shoes, necklaces. She earns a nice living.
She’s also friends with Agnelli and owns a whole lot ofjewelry.
Forty-eight hours later I have to leave for Yugoslavia, this time for
Split. Getting there is an endless torture. You have to keep switching
planes and then take a car in Trieste and drive for two hours. I don’t
 Kinski Uncut 167

want Biggi and Nasstja to travel alone and so we agree to meet at the
Munich airport. Both are ecstatic and impatient to be spending five
whole weeks with me. Furthermore, Split lies on the sea, and so Biggi
has packed bathing suits, tubes, balls, and shovels.
I’m irritable and absentminded because I’m trying to figure out
some way of telling Biggi the truth. I do have to tell her—I have no
choice. I must. First of all, it’s only right, because who knows how
long my thing with Beatrice will last, and besides during these five
weeks I’m going to fly to Rome as often as possible because I can’t
stand being without her. So how can I explain why I want to endure
these tedious trips just to spend a day or even a few hours in Rome?
The company won’t let me get away for any longer, since we’re be­
hind schedule in Prague and they’re waiting only for me.
Fellini can no longer serve as an excuse. The contract is ready and
is to be dispatched to Yugoslavia for my signature. The more honest I
am with Biggi, the better for her and for me. But I can’t tell her here.
Not here at the airport. I have to wait as long as possible.
During our first evening in Split, when Biggi, Nasstja, and I are
having supper, the telephone rings. It’s Beatrice. She asks me when
I’m coming to Rome and why I’m acting so strange on the phone. I
can’t speak freely; Biggi and Nasstja are eyeing me. Besides, I have to
shout so loud because of the poor connection that the entire hotel can
hear me.
Biggi doesn’t know French, but then I lose control and yell, “Je
t’aime! Je t’aime!” into the receiver, while Biggi holds Nasstja tight so
that she won’t make a sound and bother me. I can no longer hide the
truth.
“Does that mean you want to be alone, without us?” asks Biggi af­
ter I’ve stammered that perhaps we should live apart even though I
love both of them.
“It means we have to separate—at least for a while.”
168 K laus K inski

“You mean you need peace and privacy for a time? I understand.
But for how long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for a long time.”
“But you’ll come back to us?”
“No. . . . Yes. . . . No. . . . Yes. . . ! Of course I’ll come back. I
mean, I won’t abandon you. And it’s not that I have to be alone. I have
to be with another woman.”
Biggi suddenly eats all the grapes—probably without noticing, be­
cause before the phone call she was no longer hungry. She chokes
down the grapes as if gagging on the word “woman,” which she can’t
comprehend.
“Woman? What woman?”
“A woman. I have to be with another woman.”
“Then you don’t love us anymore?”
“My God, of course I do! I love you and Nasstja as much as I’ve
always loved you. But I have to be with this woman, do you under­
stand?” I scream, being even more unfair than I’ve already been.
“No,” says Biggi in a hoarse voice.
“Forgive me. I’m a total moron. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Oh, but you do. You know what you’re saying. I’m starting to
catch your drift.”
“What?”
“You love us, but this woman means more to you than we do.
They why did you have us come to Yugoslavia? Nastassja and I were
so happy to be with you.”
I’m at a loss for words. My head is one big garbage disposal, in
which everything is in total chaos.
Once again the telephone rings! Once again it’s Beatrice! Once
again I shout into the receiver that I love her. And so it goes all night
long. She calls up three more times, demanding to know when I’m
coming to Rome, which I can’t tell her now, much as I’d like to. Biggi
 Kinski Uncut 169

and I stay up all night. But we can’t find the right words to communi­
cate. Something is busted. She doesn’t cry, but she seems timid, de­
fenseless, as if fate were giving me a foretaste of what’s going to
happen once I leave her.
Mainly she just can’t grasp what I’ve told her or what she can
read between the lines. Biggi is by nature an independent person, ca­
pable of standing on her own two feet. But during all these years
she’s given me everything, given herself up to me without holding
back in any way. I’ve taken everything, and now suddenly she’s
standing there empty-handed. It won’t sink in that I, who had the
most dramatic fits because of my exaggerated and groundless jeal­
ousy, am now leaving her for another woman. And she thinks I’m ly­
ing when I say I still love her.

During those five weeks I drive or fly to Beatrice in Rome nine times.
Once I drive two hundred miles round-trip and change planes four
times just to fuck Beatrice for half an hour.
At every stopover en route to Rome I dash to a phone booth and
call up Beatrice, telling her I’m on the way. En route back to Yu­
goslavia, I shout, “I’ll be back!”
The shooting moves from Split to a different location. Biggi’s
nerves are shot and she does nothing but cry. She wants to leave—
right now. Climbing into the studio car, I accompany her and Nas­
tassja to Venice, 270 miles away. Once there, they can’t get a flight
until the next morning, so they go to a hotel on the Lido. As soon as
their silhouettes vanish in the wake of the ferry across the Grand
Canal, I jump into a speedboat and race across the lagoon to the air­
port. I’m the last passenger boarding the plane to Rome.
Biggi arrives in Berlin with a raging fever. She writes me that only
Nastassja prevented her from killing herself in Venice.
170 K laus K inski

The manager of the hotel where I’m staying in Yugoslavia is a woman.

If she’s the one who gave me a dose of the clap, then I can’t go to
Beatrice for the time being.
The filming is done. I stop off in Munich, get a penicillin shot
from Gislinde’s father, and hop the plane to Berlin the next morning.
Biggi hugs me as I come through the door. But she’s changed
and she’ll never be the same. That night we fuck. Biggi fucks as
shamelessly as possible to show me that she can be as big a slut as
Beatrice.
This morning everything might have gone nicely. But then
Beatrice rings up—three times in a row, because we keep getting dis­
connected. I tell her I’ll call her. Now Beatrice no longer believes me,
and I’m attacked on both fronts.
Biggi turns aggressive. She refuses to believe that Beatrice means
more to me in bed than she does. She thinks there’s only one reason
why I can’t stop seeing Beatrice: I no longer love Biggi.
“Tell me you don’t love me anymore! Tell me you don’t love me
anymore!” She keeps screaming that sentence all day long until she
nearly loses her voice and bursts into tears again. I can’t tell her I no
longer love her: I’d be lying.
For a week I keep running to the post office to call Beatrice be­
cause I can’t do it from the apartment. Then I fly to Rome.
Beatrice has also changed. And as if she knew that Biggi wanted
to prove that she’s the better slut, Beatrice leaves no stone un­
turned as she tries to outdo Biggi. For the first time she asks me
which positions I prefer and in which way she can give me the most
intense orgasms. Every day she asks me what I’d like her to wear.
Should she put on undies? How about garters? With or without
panties, and if “with,” which? She yanks out the drawers in her
 Kinski Uncut 171

dressing room and pulls out a heap of sluttish panties, teensy butt
floss she bought in Pigalle. There’s a tiny satin pouch held together
only by thin strings vanishing inside the ass crack, covering the
pussy hole but not the vaginal lips, while the crotch hair spills out
on all sides. Other thongs, in garish colors—yellow, orange, red,
green, turquoise—with a slit over the pussy or totally open all the
way from the twat lips to the asshole. She gets fucked in every
panty she models—gets fucked standing, crouching, leaning
over. . . . And she’s thoroughly convinced that she outsluts Biggi
with all her cunning.
She asks me whether I want her to get me other girls. Whether I
want to flick with her and another girl or watch while she does it with
the girls. To turn me on she tells me about very young girls who are
picked up in the street and seduced. She triumphantly asks me
whether Biggi would do all that.
“Do you wanna marry me?” she asks, hesitant, almost anxious, as
we sit down in an outdoor restaurant near Ponte Milvio. And as if I
had already replied, she suddenly becomes sad. There’s nothing cor­
rupt or perverse about her now. None of the cynicism with which she
usually tries to gloss over her innocent helplessness. Now she’s just a
lonely little girl who was born in a mountain village on the French-
Italian border and who, like any other girl on this planet, simply
yearns for love and security.
“I can’t marry you, Beatrice. I’d like to, but I can’t leave Biggi
alone.”
“Bourgeois,” she replies, full of hate.
“Don’t act stupid.”
“All my life I’ve longed for the man I love. And now that I’ve
found him, he’s too chicken to marry me.”
She cries.
“I’m not too chicken to marry you, Beatrice. It wouldn’t take
172 K laus K inski

any courage. Let me tell you something I didn’t realize till now: I
love you.”
“But you love Biggi too!”
“Yes. I love you both!”
I can’t tell her that I love all women, but that doesn’t mean I can
marry all women. I dry her tears, which are dripping over her nose
and into the minestrone. Then, canceling the trout entrées, I pay the
check, and we leave.
That night, after fucking our brains out, we sleep on the terrace,
entangled in each other. She’s put a huge sofa out on the terrace be­
cause she knows I prefer sleeping outdoors.

The breakfast table is set on the terrace. And while her maid pours the
steaming coffee, already up in arms because we always let everything
get cold, we enjoy a final naked embrace, while far below, at our feet,
Rome is starting its daily life and noise.
After breakfast we walk over to Via Nemea, to a luxury complex of
ten palazzi, a tennis court, and a swimming pool, where a garret apart­
ment has become vacant. I rent it, paying for an entire year in advance.
I’ve decided to stay in Rome. The flat is large enough for three, if
Biggi and Nasstja want to move here. At one o’clock Beatrice takes me
to the airport.
Biggi wants to move in with me and Nasstja in Rome. We terminate
our lease on the house in Berlin and temporarily rent a two-room pad in
Wannsee. Biggi wants to keep a place in Berlin because of her mother.
The contract for the Fellini film reaches us belatedly. The fee is
outrageously tiny. That Fellini keeps everything for himself. Instead
of signing the contract, I wire him: “Fuck you!” The telegraph office
calls me, saying that such a text cannot possibly be sent. But the
telegram arrives in Rome all the same.
 Kinski Uncut 173

I have to go to London for a British flick. I rent a small two-

story house opposite Hyde Park and summon Biggi and Nasstja.
The house is clean and charmingly furnished—a true dollhouse.
It’s spring again. The house is surrounded by blossoming
trees. Cats—and Biggi is crazy about cats—lounge on the roofs of
the parked cars. In endless Hyde Park, where everyone can do any­
thing he likes, Biggi and Nasstja can frolic about to their hearts’
content.
I keep whoring. I fuck the red-haired production secretary so
hard against the head of her bed that I’m worried I’ve broken her
pelvis. Her fat twat gapes open like the jaws of a snake devouring an
oversized prey, and she keeps shrieking: “Drain me! Drain me!”

I no longer come up with smart excuses. “I have to buy cigarettes,” I

simply say to Biggi, or “I have to get to the bank.” Then I visit the
production secretary or one of the actresses, or an extra, or the strip­
pers in Soho, or I just hit on some broad in the street. In the middle of
the night I may sneak out of bed and go to Piccadilly for the young
hookers in Chinatown.
I bring one woman home. Biggi and Nasstja have gone to
Brighton. The woman is an Israeli colonel in mufti. I explain that I’d
like to see her papers because I’ve never fucked an officer and I want
to make sure she’s not putting me on. If Mary Magdalene was as big a
turn-on as this colonel, I can understand why Jesus had the hots for
her. Even though she’s got black hair on her upper lip, something that
totally excites me in a woman, I’m not quite with it. Beatrice has an­
nounced that she’ll be spending half a day in London. I fuck the
colonel and send her away.
174 K laus K inski

Just when Beatrice arrives, I have to be shooting, and she has

to get back to Rome that same evening. Wearing the costume of an
eighteenth-century British iord, I dash into the Hotel Dorchester. For
exactly thirty-five minutes Beatrice and I squat on one another. She
goes to the airport alone.

David Lean’s assistant comes to the Shepperton Studio and says that
three characters are left in Doctor Zhivago. Lean, who’s in Madrid,
wants to know which I’d like to play. “Any of them,” I reply.

At the end of November I shoot a Spanish movie in Barcelona, where

MGM sends me the script and the contract for Zhivago,
Christmas Eve. I buy presents for Biggi and Nasstja and give
the Barcelona hookers whatever’s left over from my final install­
ment, for nearly all of them have kids. On Christmas Day I’m back
in our apartment in Wannsee, and Biggi and I go skating across the
frozen lake.
In January I have to start shooting Zhivago, Biggi and Nasstja
come along to Madrid because I’m contracted for four months even
though I could shoot this garbage in a week. We rent a pad and stay
until February. I’ve got four weeks off but I’m still on salary.
We stop off in Munich, where Sergio Leone is screening his
Western A Fistful of Dollars, He wants to meet me. Then he hires me
for his second Western, For a Few Dollars More,

Back in Berlin, I get the Jaguar out of the garage, race to Munich, get
Pola, and dash with her to Rome for costume tryouts. This is the first
time that we sleep in the new apartment on Via Nemea. I don’t call
 Kinski Uncut 175

Beatrice. I stay alone with Pola. She’s almost thirteen, and I’m ab­
solutely nuts about her.
David Lean’s crew scours the whole of Spain for the final rem­
nants of unmelted snow. We drive almost two hundred miles from
Madrid, spending the night in some crummy village hotels. The
woman caring for the boy who has to be filmed (with Omar Sharif,
Geraldine Chaplin, Ralph Richardson, and myself) in the cattle car
heading toward Siberia accompanies him.
Her broad hips and heavy thighs contrast unbelievably with her
slender torso, as if Nature had whimsically joined the upper body of
one person to the lower body of another. Furthermore, her thighs are
hirsute all the way up to the hips. The hair makes her look like a fe­
male satyr. I fuck her only standing in front of a mirror so I can keep
this strange creature constantly in view with every thrust, especially
when I shoot inside her. I have to wear socks when I sneak across the
creaking floorboards of the motel hall, because you can hear every fart
in the rooms. We also fuck during lunch breaks. After midnight she
steals into my room, wearing only a teddy. If someone has to go to the
hallway toilet at night and runs into her, he’ll know what she’s doing.
In Madrid, the fucking ought to stop. Her husband comes to their
villa every evening and often during lunch breaks. But he’s in the United
States now, and the villa is on our route. So first we stop off there. While
I look over the house, the driver brings in the suitcases, including mine.
“Herr Kinski will be taking a cab,” the female satyr says over my
head to the driver. We fuck all night in her double bed.

David Lean has a red Rolls-Royce Cabriolet, which, aside from the
satyr, is what interests me most about making Zhivago. I keep gaping
at the car, just like when I was a little boy gawking at toy cars, pressing
my nose flat against the window of the toy store.
176 K laus K inski

“Don’t lose your mind,” says David Lean with a smile. He’s crazy
about his red Rolls. All day long, he keeps it under a customized cover
like a pair of rompers, molded right down to the shape of the hood or­
nament, like a condom to a boner. “In a couple of years you’ll be sit­
ting in a Rolls yourself.”

I don’t dare show Biggi the wire that’s just arrived and that I automati­
cally tore open because I thought it was addressed to me. But it’s for
Biggi, and it’s from a friend of her mother’s in Berlin. Her mother’s
dead. The situation is all the more hopeless since we were arguing
and fistfighting until the telegraph boy rang the bell.
I lock myself in the bathroom and keep rereading the wire. And I
still can’t grasp the news, just as I couldn’t grasp the news about my
mother’s death, about the journalist who killed herself, about Gis-
linde’s sister, and about Jasmin. I have only one thought: Make up
with Biggi and let her know that she’s not defenseless. Her mother
was the only person she had aside from me and Nastassja. When I go
to Biggi, I forget the telegram in the bathrobe.
Biggi and I have reconciled—but then I hear her shriek in the
bathroom. I dash over to her and find her collapsed on the floor, the
crumpled telegram in her clenched hands. I pick her up in my arms
and carry her to her room.
For the rest of the day she’s unable to come out with a coherent
sentence. She takes Nastassja into her bed, hugs her desperately,
and covers her with kisses. Nasstja eyes me, quizzical and help­
less. Pola, too, keeps quiet; she spends hours standing motion­
less on the threshold. I walk out on the balcony of our apartment
on the twenty-second floor and stare at the brown ball of the
sun, which is smeared over the stony desert of Madrid like coagu­
lated blood.
 Kinski Uncut 177

Biggi stands next to me. I didn’t hear her coming. She’s stopped
crying, and her voice is soft, yet impatient and absent, she speaks like
someone who has to do a lot of preparing for something she can’t re­
member.
“In any case I have to go to Berlin first thing tomorrow. I’ll take
Nastassja along.”
“I’ll get the tickets very early.”
“Book the first flight out. Even if I have to change planes. Any
flight. I mustn’t be late for the funeral, no matter what. I may be the
only mourner. I also have to order flowers. Lots of flowers, very, very,
beautiful flowers. Or do you think I should order a wreath?”
“Bring your mother flowers.”
“What about the coffin? My God! She probably doesn’t have a
coffin yet! What kind of coffin should I get? I want a zinc coffin. I
don’t want her eaten up by maggots. Is it true that corpses in the
ground are eaten up by maggots?”
“Yes. It’s natural. The maggots arose from the earth, from the de­
cay of animals and plants. The animal eaten by the maggots also
decomposes, and its decay produces new maggots. But it also pro­
duces plants and flowers. Decay produces new life.”
“But I don’t want my mother to decay. I want a zinc coffin.”
“I’ll give you enough money.”
“She won’t decay in a zinc coffin?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll buy a zinc coffin. And a gravestone. How will I
manage?”
“We have time for the gravestone.”
“But the grave. I have to pick a grave. And then plants for the grave.”
“We have time for the plants.”
“Do you think I’ll get everything done in time?”
“Definitely.”
178 K laus K inski

“So get the tickets at the crack of dawn, okay?”

“I can drive to the airport right now.”
“No, no. Tomorrow morning. Don’t leave me alone now.”
She goes back inside the dreary apartment. No one has turned on
any light. Pola is still standing around and she’s scared when I bump
into her in the darkness. But then I find the light switch.
A swallow crashes against the large glass window and drops
into the corner of the balcony, where it remains, twitching. It must
have lost its sense of direction. I pick it up just as Biggi comes out
on the balcony. She takes the swallow from my hand and gently
strokes its head. I’ve never seen a swallow at such close range. Its
body is so tender and frail. But its down and its flight feathers are
weathered and tangled, and its roving eyes peer into the distance.
The swallow has an indomitable urge for freedom. I feel as if it’s try­
ing to smell out freedom. Biggi, attempting to make it fly again,
opens her hands. For a few seconds, nothing happens. Then, with a
powerful thrust of its wings, the swallow zooms up from Biggi’s
palm and melts into the cool night sky. Biggi smiles. I put my arm
around her shoulders.
“Does the swallow also decay when it’s dead, and is it eaten by
maggots?”
“Yes. It also decays and it’s eaten by maggots.”
“Then I won’t buy a zinc coffin.”
She snuggles very close to me, and we remain like that for a long
time, not saying a word about her dead mother.

I’ve brought Biggi and Nasstja to the airport, and now I’m alone with
Pola. Her vacation is ending. I’m afraid of being all alone; what if Biggi
and Nasstja don’t return before Pola’s departure? Thank goodness,
Biggi calls me from Berlin, saying she’ll be back in two days. She only
 Kinski Uncut 179

wants to order the headstone and also the plants for the grave and its
tending.
At last we get away from the poisonous heat of Madrid and drive
to Almeria on the sea, where Sergio Leone is shooting his Western.
We rent a dilapidated beach house with a terrace so huge that we can
play tennis on it. The ocean roars day and night, and I can finally
sleep again.
The Gypsies of Andalusia become my brothers. They regard
me as one of their own and take me into their families. Soon I know
all of them, from Almeria to Granada, from Málaga to Seville. And
also the Gypsy women, from the schoolgirls to the flamenco dancers
and the hookers. Once a week I throw a party on my terrace, invit­
ing only Gypsies. We wreathe our heads in flowers and dance and
sing under the stars, which are immense and hang so low it’s as
if they’re about to land on our heads. The flamenco of the Gypsy
has nothing to do with the flamenco for tourists. Real flamenco is
like sex.

Biggi, Nastassja, and I move into the Rome apartment. I’ve left the
Jaguar in Germany and I buy a Maserati. To make things as nice as
possible for Biggi and Nasstja, I put in the most expensive velvet car­
pets, I hang the walls with pure Italian silk, which I also use for the
curtains and tablecloths, and I mount gilded doorknobs and window
handles as well as gilded faucets in the bathrooms and toilets.

I agree to do a British flick in Morocco with Margareth Lee and Senta

Berger. Biggi is taking care of the apartment on Via Nemea, which she
loves, even though I bang my head a hundred times a day on the slop­
ing walls.
180 Klaus Kinski

Upon reaching the Hotel La Mamounia in Marrakesh I tell

them to take my bags up to my room. I’ve got more important
things to do.
My first woman is a veiled cyclist. She wears a black burnoose like
a nun’s habit, and all I see is her ringed fingers on the handlebars, her
bare feet in her sandals, and her coal-black eyes. I call to her as if hail­
ing a cab. She turns her head, narrowly missing a car. The drivers
here must all be ex-camel drivers. I have her write the time and place
on a scrap of paper. She’s written “twelve midnight”—that much I can
read. The address is in Arabic, and I can’t possibly decipher it. I’ll
hand the scrap to a cabby. It’s three P.M. Nine hours more to mid­
night. I spend them in the bazaars, where the street kids pull me
around, offer me drugs, and ask if I wanna go to bed with them. Fi­
nally I join the hash smokers on the dusty ground and listen to the
storyteller. I don’t understand a word, but he nevertheless transports
me to an Oriental fairy world.
Then I heave a little girl to my shoulders: She can’t find her way
through the teeming marketplace and so she can’t see anything.
She’s not wearing panties under her torn little dress. I can tell be­
cause her naked twat sticks to the back of my neck, which gets wet.
The girl rubbing her clit against me as I caress her skinny thighs; the
evocative movement of the storyteller; the hash, which is extremely
strong in Morocco; the numbing air, spiced with indefinable aromas
and a sultry stench; the monotonous Oriental music seeping in from
all nooks and crannies like a narcotic; the voices whispering, mur­
muring, calling, yelling, yelping, laughing in the most disparate
Arabic dialects—all these things might have caused me to miss my
appointment with the cyclist. But the half-naked girl on my shoul­
ders points to the crumpled-up note that drops to the ground from
my pants pocket.
It’s shortly before midnight. The little girl clings to my hand and
 Kinski Uncut 181

won’t make a move without me. I give her all the cash I can spare, and
with body language I make it clear that I’ll be back in the market to­
morrow, same time, same place.
The cabby apparently can’t read the scrap either. At any rate, he
drives up and down, asks directions of every muffled figure in the un­
lit, zigzagging alleys through which his car can barely squeeze. Even­
tually, at one A.M., he stops at an unlit, ramshackle house with a heavy,
iron-fitted door.
The door is ajar. I light a match and grope my way through the
corridor, which smells of mint and cinnamon. The match flickers out.
I don’t see the steps and so I plunge down them, banging my shin and
cursing loudly.
A door opens a crack. From inside comes the dim glow of a
kerosene lamp, and I can make out the silhouette of a veiled figure.
She steps aside as if inviting me in. But I can’t yet tell whether it’s my
biker. The eyes of veiled Moroccan women all look confusingly alike.
She pulls me into the almost empty room, which contains nothing but
a bare bed. So it must be my cyclist.
She slips out of her burnoose and veil, and she’s naked. The
trouble with veiled women is that you can’t tell how old they are;
their eyes still sparkle even when their bodies are long since
withered, so you can’t see whether they’re beautiful or ugly. My
cyclist isn’t beautiful in the usual sense, not even pretty. But so far,
I’ve never cared. Her pockmarked face and her entire body look like
the face and body of a predatory beast that has fought a lot of fights.
She has a protruding belly, with a shaved twat underneath. Her tits
aren’t big, but they’re heavy. I strip naked, and she pulls me down to
the mattress. Her hole is as hot as if she wanted to boil my dick. She
moans very softly. But she clings tight to the brass rods of the bed
over her head, twists her pock-marked face, and exposes her clenched
predatory teeth. . . .
182 K laus K inski

She’s got a big scar on her left areola; she must have had a deep
injury. When I finger the scar, she tells me in sign language that some­
one put out a cigarette on her breast. Kissing the scar, I glance at the
clock: Daylight is pushing through the cracks of the ill-fitting shutters.
It’s seven. I dress and hunt for money in my pockets. But she doesn’t
want any.

The park of La Mamounia once belonged to a prince. It’s got several

acres jungle-dense with the rarest palms, orange trees, lemon trees,
date trees, and fig trees, and fleshy plants and gigantic blossoms in
between. A huge, bricked-in palm tree towers from the swimming
pool. You can assume you’ll find R and R here. Churchill and the
slut queen of England may have managed to relax here, but not me.
Since I can’t sleep at night, I at least try to sleep during the day,
when I’m not shooting. I stretch out on a chaise longue by the
pool. A breeze wafts over from the shady park twenty-four hours
a day.
But even in the daytime I’m haunted by a young Moroccan
woman who works as a telephone operator at La Mamounia. She does
the graveyard shift, like her husband, the head of personnel. During
the day she sleeps with him. So at night she comes panting up the
stairs and corridors for a quickie with me. She’s skinny, and her bones
are as hot as glowing coals. Her mouth is parched from the heat of her
body, as if from a fever. It wouldn’t surprise me if she spewed fire. We
have to luck fast, and she has to be super-careful.
Taking a shortcut to the Mamounia, I have to pass through dark
streets and alleys. Two young Moroccans are tailing me. I noticed
them long ago, when I first turned in to the unlit, unpaved alleys.
They quicken their pace and are already at my sides. Now I know
what they’re after. Or at least I think I know.
Earliest known family photo of Klaus (on his mother’s lap), taken in Sopot, Poland, 1928.
Kinski in the fifties, most likely in Germany. Reciting poetry in Germany in the fifties.

Kinski in his famous solo performance ofjean

Cocteau’s La Voix ham(line, Germany, 1949.
(Akademie der Kiinste/Freie Universität,
Bert iu)
7he Idiot, by Dostoevsky, a performance of Kinski with O. YV. Fischer in Ludwig II of
ballet, pantomime, and theater. International Bavaria. Munich. 1954. (Klan Film)
Theater Festival. Venice. 1952.
Kinder, Mütter und ein General.
Germany. 1954. (Erie Pommer/
In tereon tineu ted Produktion)

Kinski (far left) talking with a director

on the set of one of his early movies in
Germany, sometime in the fifties.
(Deutsches Institut fü r Filmkunde)
 Kinski on location of
For a Few Dollars
More. Spain. 19()5.
(Grimaldi/P.E.A.
Production)

Kinski in Iskender (theater), Munich, 1954. For a Few Dollars More, Italy. 19()5.
(Star Photo/Miinchen) (Grim aid i/P. E.A. Production)
Nastassja as a little girl, Berlin, about 1963.
Woyzeck, (Germany (shot on location in Kinski in // Grande Silenzio, Italy. 1967. (Adel-
Czechoslovakia), 1978. (Wenter Herzog phia Cinematografiea)
Fihnprodnktion)

Marquis de Sade: Justine, Italy, 1968. (Assoei- U lmportant e’esf d ’a inter, France, 1974. (Albina
azione Nazionale Cinemalografie/te) Prodnetions)
Aguirre, the Wrath oj G'xl. Peru. 1971 72. (Werut r Herzog Filmprodukt ion)

L Important e'est d'aimer. Paris. 1974. (Albina Product ions)

 F itzc a n a ld o , Iquitos, Peru, 1981.
(Beat Presser/Werner Herzog Fihnproduktion)

La Chanson de Roland. France, 1977. (Gaumont

FR3 Productions)

N osfcratu , Delft, H olland, 1978. (Werner Her­

zog FUmp /'od uht io n)
On a Chinese junk in the harbor of Hong Kong, 1972. ( M i n h o T /E s ta te o f K i a u s K i n s k i )
 Opposite: Kinski and Minhoi
on the grounds of their villa
on the Via Appia Antica,
Rome, 1969.

Wedding of Kinski and Minhoi, Rome,

May 1971.

Portrait of Minhoi taken hy

Kinski, Rome, 1969.
Kinski. Minhoi. and Nanhoi on the set of La Chanson de Roland. France. 1977.
Kinski as
Paganini. Rome,
1987.
 Portrait of Nanhoi at age
seventeen. Paris. 1993. (Fabian
Ceva 11os/Sygm a)

Kinski with puppy on his

property in Lagunitas.
California. 1990. He is
clutching the typewritten
manuscript ofliis auto­
biography.
(Gerard Rancinan/GLMR)
 Kinski Uncut 183

Many Moroccans carry a knife, and you get stabbed without be­
ing able to emit a sound. But I’m not scared; I keep marching. The
guy on my right comes so close that our shoulders touch.
“You’re good-looking,” he says mysteriously, without missing a
beat in his cheerful march, which keeps step with mine. So that’s it, I
think.
“Yes, you’re good-looking and I want you,” he repeats.
The guy on my left must be deaf and dumb, or else he doesn’t
know French.
“If you say so . . . But I’m wiped out, I’ve gotta get some
shut-eye.”
We march in unison, forming a broad front like the Three Muske­
teers. The guy to my right slips his arm into mine. When the mute one
sees this, he does likewise. If they’ve got knives, I muse, then my arms
aren’t free.
“You’ve got spunk,” says the right-hand guy.
“Why?” I ask as innocently as possible, aware of what he’s hint­
ing at.
“Because you don’t know if we’ve got knives. We’re two against
one, it’s dark, and nobody would hear your screams.”
“Why would you hurt me?”
“For instance, if you refuse to get fucked.”
“Now look, I’ve got nothing against you. I’m just wiped out.
I’ve been fucking all night and I’m totally drained. You wouldn’t
have much fun with me. By the way, I think I’m lost. Where’s
La Mamounia?”
“We’re going in the right direction.”
I don’t believe him. There’s no light anywhere to be seen, not
even in the distance. Nothing. And I’m unfamiliar with these sur­
roundings. The right-hand guy keeps whispering various declarations
of love to me while the left-hand guy is content to squeeze my left arm.
184 K laus K inski

Eventually we come to a dark, unpaved, semicircular street. A few

yards later, lights flicker from very far away, like a coastline when
you’ve swum out to sea at night.
“Head toward the lights. Hang a right at the next corner, and then
keep going straight. You’ll hit La Mamounia directly. You’re a nice
guy. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”
“Who knows . . . ?”
I turn around—you can never be sure with these creeps.
When I piss against a palm, my dick burns like nettles: another
dose of the clap.
I have no time to go to the doctor’s office. He brings his shot to
me. We’re filming in a mosaicked palace. Between takes the doctor
and I go up to the gallery above the tea salon. I drop my drawers, and
just as the penicillin goes into my bare butt, they’re calling me for the
next take.

Maria Rohm is the steady girlfriend of the producer I’m doing the
Marrakesh flick for. But that doesn’t stop her from fooling around
with Margareth and with me. And Margareth, who’s married to my
agent, fools around with me, and I with both of them. Their flesh re­
mains snowy white despite the ruthless sun, and it’s so soft and clean
that I’m turned on by its contrast with that of the Moroccan women,
who are neither light-skinned nor clean.
“You’re lucky,” Senta Berger tells me. “During my seven weeks
here, I have to keep my thighs together.”
“Then come to me,” I say from my chaise longue. She’s standing
with her sweet, full pussy right in front of my mouth while pubic hair
wells out of her tiny bikini.
“No way,” she says. “I’m engaged.” Then she frowns as if think­
ing how stupid her words are.
 Kinski Uncut 185

After Marrakesh two movies in London. Then one in Paris. Then one
on Capri, with Martine Carol.
Every day Martine shows off one of her fur coats for me. She’s got
at least twenty, and there’s one she’s especially proud of: The unborn
babies are cut out of their murdered mothers’ bellies. Then the babies
are skinned alive. This makes the fur shine unbelievably. A coat is
made up of many skins of many babies cut from their wombs. Such a
coat fetches several hundred thousand marks. They’re very rare.
Thank goodness!
Not only is she obsessed with fur, she also collects clothes,
houses, land, islands, and, above all, diamonds. Lots of diamonds.
Big ones. The biggest are the size of pigeon eggs, and she’s already
wearing them for breakfast. I feel sorry for her. She’d give it all up just
to be a couple of years younger. She didn’t have to confess it to me
tearfully.
“As soon as you get to London again, you’ll live in my villa
in Hyde Park,” she repeats several times a day, as if talking to a
disobedient brat. “I’ll pick you up at the airport in my Rolls-
Royce.”

Some asshole artistic director has the nerve to keep asking me if I’d be
willing to perform at Berlin’s Schiller Theater. His assistant keeps
calling me, but I tell him: “You could offer me any amount of dough,
but I’d rather do the lousiest movie than set even one foot in your
graveyard!”
I can also afford to turn down the contemptible German movie
projects. The Italians offers me a choice of thirty flicks a week. I ac­
cept the one that pays the most.
186 K laus K inski

We’ve moved from Via Nemea to Cassia Antica, Beatrice’s quarter.

But I see her only twice more. The first time’s in the home of Carla
G ravina, the wife of the actor Gian Maria Volonté. Carla’s in bed with
the flu. I visit her with Beatrice.
Our house in the Cassia is a freestanding palazzo behind a high,
rose-covered wall. It’s got eight rooms, four baths, a garden terrace,
a garage, a swimming pool, and one of the biggest and loveliest pri­
vate parks in Rome. All year long, the most exquisite tropical plants
and flowers grow and blossom here. Like half of Rome, the place
is owned by a real estate office that belongs to the Vatican. Rent:
eight thousand marks a month. Our staff consists of two maids and
a cook.
I get a warning from fate. But I pay no attention. I’m doing a
Western at Cinecittà. On the first day of shooting, the horse I’m doz­
ing on does half a backflip, squeezes me against a wall, and falls on top
of me with its entire body weight. I manage to kick it to avoid getting
trampled to death. But now I can’t stand up; I can’t even sit up or
kneel. My pants have burst open at the crotch and the inner thighs.
The glands at the right of my genitals have swollen up into a black-
and-blue mound.
I absolutely refuse to go to the hospital. Two members of the crew
lug me to my dressing room. They lay me out on the couch, and I ask
them to leave me alone. I just want to rest up a little. The pain is so
bad that I try to call them back and ask for a painkiller. But they can’t
hear me.
As soon as I attempt to sit up, I collapse like Jell-O, as if my spine
were gone. Rolling off the couch, I crawl to the door. I throw my belt
over the door handle and succeed in pulling it down. Then I crawl
down the corridor to the fitting room.
 Kinski Uncut 187

The dresser gets a crew member, and I’m taken to a hospital. Af­
ter X-raying me, the doctor says that my backbone is fractured.
“Cracked,” he corrects himself—that is, the spinal cord isn’t injured.
Another half inch, and I’d’ve been paralyzed for life. I have to stay at
the hospital.
Biggi, whom we’ve called up, weeps and yells in fear. I can’t move
my body. All I can do is press the buzzer at the head of my bed and,
with utmost effort, use the telephone. I have to make do with a bedpan
that the nurse shoves under me.
I tell the night nurse to come back when everyone else is
asleep.
In my state sex is pretty tricky. But she straddles me so skillfully
that my dick stands up despite everything, and she rides me so cau­
tiously that neither her butt nor her vaginal lips so much as graze my
abdomen even once. The climax is very painful, so we can do it only
once. But from night to night, the nurse’s positions get more and more
inventive.
After twelve days I’m fed up with being a cripple.
With a customized corset I make my first attempts to stand and
walk, and I let the nurse lead me shuffling to the toilet.
The Western is down the drain for me. I get neither my salary nor
insurance because the producer turns out not to have carried a policy.
Furthermore, for the time being I can’t accept any role in which I ride
a horse or have to strain myself physically in any other way. I can’t
even ride in a car. “Except a Rolls-Royce,” the doctor says laconi­
cally. I take him at his word and buy my first Silver Cloud. Three
weeks later I toss my corset through the window of the rolling Rolls-
Royce and sign a contract for Carmen, Baby in Spain, where, despite
a strict prohibition by the doctor, I gallop around from dawn to dusk
and fight an eight-hour duel with knives.
Biggi and Nasstja have come along to Spain. At night the pain
188 K laus K inski

makes me shriek in bed, and in the morning Biggi and the bellboy
have to pull me to a sitting position because I’m as stiff as a log.

After Spain, Brazil. Again I fly alone. A rainstorm has washed away
the slum shacks of the favelas, claiming thousands of lives. When I
arrive in Rio, the water is three feet deep. But it’s neither the nat­
ural disaster nor the cholera epidemic that prevents me from doing
very much.
Day and night the pain is unbearable, and the awful weather—
120 degrees Fahrenheit, with 80 percent humidity—drains me
so thoroughly that I’m afraid I won’t get to enjoy the pre-Carnival
season.
The pre-Carnival is a lot more exciting than the Mardi Gras itself
because it’s done without silly costumes, and you can smell and grab
the sweaty, barely clad bodies of the women. The Brazilians, from
youngsters to oldsters, move to a samba beat wherever they’re walking
or standing, and the drums never stop playing. When one stops, an­
other starts. With these samba steps, the girls of Rio, whose swinging
hips and whirling butts get you so drunk even when they walk nor­
mally, can give you the boner of a lifetime without touching you.
I move out of the senile Copacabana Palace Hotel. The modern
Lerne Palace Hotel, where I’m now staying, lies right on the long
beach of Rio de Janiero. Nevertheless I usually sleep outdoors. The
nights are so mild that the sand is covered with tangled bodies even af­
ter twilight. No one cares what anyone else is doing, because they’re
all fucking.
The girls of Rio, rich and poor, were made for love. The paupers
go streetwalking to earn some money on the side even if they’re mar­
ried. They lean against the parked cars in the Copacabana, lifting their
skirts, under which they wear no panties.
 Kinski Uncut 189

“Grab it,” says one. “If you like, you can fuck me right here.”
The rich girls differ only in being rich and not necessarily having
to walk the streets—at least, not to survive.

The Brazilian climate is good for my spine. The pain is gone. My next
stop is Hong Kong.
By the time we get there after a twenty-six-hour flight, the only
one of us who isn’t wiped out is Nasstja; she’s been running through
the plane, perking up even the grouchiest passenger. Biggi is furious
at me because I disappeared with the Lufthansa stewardess for such a
long time and because the girl even tried to write down her Hong
Kong address for me.
During the ferry crossing from Kowloon, Biggi slaps my face. Then,
at the Hilton, she has a nervous breakdown. There’s nothing I can do.
She doesn’t even want me to touch her. Nasty as it may sound, all I can
think about is the Chinese women, and my pulse beats like crazy.
I stroll through the teeming streets until I find a ricksha, which takes
me to a Chinese hooker. When my initial thirst is slaked, I sit down with
the Chinese on the street in front of her house and eat with them, among
steaming ketdes and crackling, smoking fires on which crabs and octo­
puses are roasting. I’ve got two movies to do in Hong Kong . They’re
gonna take ten weeks. I’ll stick to a sound, regular diet to keep up my
strength. All I have to do is think of the hooker I just went to.
Margareth Lee and Maria Rohm are also in the cast; they fuck
each other like mad because the producer, who flies to Europe once a
week, is practically never around.
There’s no hotel nearby in Kowloon, so Margareth, Maria, and I
are in a real pigsty of a room, waiting to shoot. We’re joined by the
British makeup woman and her daughter. But Margareth and Maria
aren’t in the mood. They and the daughter sit down on my bed,
190 K laus K inski

deciding which of them should remove which of my clothes, and

which one can use which of my body parts first. No one asks me.

Nastassja has to have her appendix removed. When she’s up and

around again, we go to the Tiger Balm Garden and to Aberdeen,
where junks soundlessly glide past us like phantom ships, floating
above the surface like patches of fogs. People offer us cuttlefish and
crabs and shrimps, which are roasted alive before us on charcoal fires.
During the nights we sail out on the China Sea.
The months in Hong Kong are drawing to a close, and I dash
from one hotel room to the next, from the girls in Kowloon to the girls
in Aberdeen to the Filipino models demonstrating their national cos­
tumes at the Hilton From Margareth to Maria. From Hong Kong to
Taipei, Beijing, and Shanghai.

In Rome I trade in the Rolls-Royce for another. When I’m sick of this
one, I again buy a Maserati, then a Ferrari, and then a Rolls-Royce
Cabriolet again, for a hundred thousand bucks. I trade in cars because
a door is rattling, or because I can’t get the window down fast enough
when a girl strolls by, or because I’ve had the car for over a week and
I’m fed up with the color.
Our first stop is New York, where I have to shoot for a week with
Edward G. Robinson. After screwing a couple of clapped-out Broad­
way hookers, I go hunting in Greenwich Village, where at night the
girls wait outside the Beat dives for someone who’ll pay them a couple
of bucks with which to buy grass. They’ll do anything for grass. You
can’t loiter in groups on the street because the cops yell, “Keep mov­
ing!” So I bring as many of these Lolitas as possible back to my hotel.
Even in winter they only wear skimpy rags on their bodies, which are
 Kinski Uncut 191

scrawny from drugs, and so I first buy clothes for them. They ask for
cash so they can buy their winter clothes themselves. But I don’t fall
for that.

In Cortina d’Ampezzo, I make the first snowbound Western. Biggi and

Nasstja are happy and cheerful; they frolic in the snow, go sledding all
day, skating, and ride jingly, horse-drawn sleighs to the mountains.
But the instant I’m alone with Biggi, we argue and hit one another.
This time the reason is the black American actress Sherene
Miller, who’s also starring in the movie. She’s got a boyish body, boy­
ish haircut, boyish ass, and almost no tits. Her room lies directly over
our apartment.
In the morning, when I come back after fucking Sherene half the
night, I sneak past a sleeping Biggi to get my toothbrush, razor, and
fresh underwear. This way, we can’t fight. I kiss her and Nasstja cau­
tiously, to avoid waking them.
Does Nasstja have any inkling of my lifestyle? She adores her
mother more than anything in the world, but she also loves me more
and more every day, and I’m crazy about her. I just can’t imagine that
we could be separated someday.

In Rome Marlon Brando bangs away at Sherene’s door every night.

He’s filming some piece of garbage and lives in the same pensione as
Sherene. I hope she finally opens the door and lets him in so I can at­
tend to other twats. But she never does open the door, and the next
day I have to fuck her in her dressing room at Helios Studio. Sherene
is very jealous and can’t take jokes in this department. Leaving the
pensione, where Brando won’t give her a moment’s peace, she
switches to the Hotel de la Ville, near the Piazza di Spagna. She orders
192 K laus K inski

me to visit her. The little sister ofJean-Louis Trintignant’s wife is also

here. She wants to drag me to an LSD party, but I prefer to stay
with Sherene’s friend, a black American singer, who hasn’t dressed
yet. Sherene is furious and cusses me out in front of all the people in
the hotel lobby. But if she doesn’t like my habits, why did she tell me
that her friend was still in the room and had to get dressed? Sherene
ought to know me by now.

Visconti has his people inquire if I want to do a movie with him. They
keep ringing me up at the studio, asking me to be patient until the
dates are decided on and the contract can be worked out.
“Who is this Visconti?” I ask my agent, Gino.
“You’d be better off doing your next Western,” he replies.
“Esso,” says Rinaldo Geladi, a PR man, pointing his thumb over
his shoulder. He’s referring to the girl who’s vanished in the toilet. I
met her half an hour ago. Rinaldo brought her to our location in
Magliana, outside Rome. The girl had asked him to take her along be­
cause she wanted to meet me. I greeted her, got behind the wheel of
her Ferrari, and drove her to the restaurant, where we’re still sitting
during the lunch break. She couldn’t lift a forkful of spaghetti to her
red lips without first looking up with her gorgeous Italian eyes and
smiling at me. Now I see that she’s only picking at the spaghetti and
hasn’t eaten a bite.
“What does 4esso’ mean?” I ask Rinaldo.
“Moratti.”
“Oh, the cigarette maker.”
“Hell, no. Not Mwratti, Moratti. Her name is Susanne Moratti.
Her father is the richest man in Italy.”
“Interesting,” I say.
Susanne returns from the toilet. She’s put on more lipstick and
 Kinski Uncut 193

smiles even more lovingly than before. I now take a much closer look
at her. Not because her father is the richest man in Italy, but because I
previously looked at her in a purely mechanical way.
She has long, silky hair, super-healthy teeth, fine, sensual lips,
and dreamy, yearning eyes. Her body is thin and frail, like a porcelain
figure. But as absent and mournful as her expression may be, and as
elflike as her body is, she must be incredibly tough and energetic. Af­
ter all, she drives the fastest racing car in the world. She wears a light­
weight, flowery summer frock and a diamond of at least ten carats.
Rinaldo slaps me on the back. I was so absorbed in Susanne, who
likewise seemed to have forgotten everything and everyone around
her—forgotten even to smile at me—that I didn’t notice the director,
who came to our table ten minutes ago to get me back before the cam­
era. I give Susanne my phone number, she gives me hers, and we
promise to meet again.
She rings me up that very same evening. It didn’t occur to her that
Biggi might answer. Nor did I reckon with the possibility—Biggi
never answers the phone.
“For you. Some woman,” she says nastily.
I can’t talk to Susanne for long. Biggi has gone to her room and
can’t hear me, but I don’t want a repeat of what happened in Yu­
goslavia. I tell Susanne not to call me up anymore, and I’ll meet her
at Rinaldo’s studio.
Some Russian princess offers me a house on the Via Appia, one of
the oldest and most beautiful roads in the world. The house, owned
by Countess Vassarotti, is for rent.
Together with the princess, whose dog pisses in my Rolls-
Royce, I drive over to have a look at the place. It’s next door to Gina
Lollobrigida’s villa. The house is completely isolated, on a gigantic
lot filled with pines, cypresses, centuries-old Japanese cherry trees,
roses, oleanders, orange trees, and lemon trees, with scattered
194 K laus K inski

Roman ruins. The entire property is surrounded by an ancient wall

seven feet high.
The house itself is nine centuries old and is included in books on
historic Italian landmarks. It’s got four stories, fourteen rooms, seven
baths, five fireplaces, and an elevator going up to the tower. The
second-floor salon is sixty-six feet long and has a thirty-three-foot ceil­
ing. There’s also a separate wing for the staff and, in the orchard, a
guest cottage with its own salon, two baths, and four rooms on the
second story. Under the heavy, luxuriant branches of almond and
walnut trees is a hothouse containing rare orchids.
In the Middle Ages the castello was transformed into a church. No
one knows what it was before that. The foundation walls were built on
granite before the Christian era, and the sign of the Vatican is carved
into the ashlar staircase. Indeed, the Vatican leaves its brand on all
sorts of property, the way ranches mark the butts of their cows.
Countess Vassarotti lives alone in the castello. Her husband, a
movie producer, committed suicide. She’s surrounded by worm-
eaten antiques that collapse when you lean against them. The place is
a jungle of decaying straw flowers, hundreds of tasteless and rotting
paintings, Chinese rugs endlessly pissed on by the dogs and cats, and
mountains of valuable but chipped porcelain.
The electric lights don’t work, and neither does the elevator,
whose shaft lies in two feet of water under the main floor. While mak­
ing a dreadful movie in Rome, Jane Fonda stayed here for six months,
and during a cloudburst she was stuck in the elevator for hours. Roger
Vadim dealt the coup de grace, turning the place into a complete
pigsty.
If I throw out most of the junk and bring the house up to par, I
can turn it into the fairy-tale castle I need.
When I tell Biggi about the house, she wants to see it right away.
And once she sees it, she doesn’t want to leave. Gino tears his hair:
 Kinski Uncut 195

“Don’t you realize the entire Via Appia is infested with snakes and
rats? The poisonous lizards creep into your bed! The mosquitoes eat
you alive! The ants and spiders crawl into your soup! The house is so
old that you’ll still be trying to save it from dry rot when you’re an old
man! You’ll be coming back to me three months from now, cursing
me for not keeping you from renting it!”
I let him talk. Biggi and Nasstja are gonna have their dream castle.
Nasstja is attending school in Rome, and both of them absolutely want
to remain in Italy.

I’ve known for weeks that I have to get back to Almeria. Biggi knows it
too, but we haven’t talked about it. Now, all at once, she wants to
come along. I tell her it would be better if we separated for a couple of
weeks.
The reason is Susanne. I see her more and more often. She accom­
panies me wherever I go, waiting patiently while I shoot in the suffocat­
ing studios, though I have barely any time for her. She endures the
broiling heat during outdoor filming, when there’s often no vacant
chair, much less an umbrella. She dogs my every step and grows sad­
der and sadder as the day of my departure comes nearer. F o ri haven’t
told her whether she can come with me or how I feel about her. I my­
self don’t know. She sits silently next to me, not eating a bite of food,
when I dine in a Japanese restaurant or when I’m with architects and
designers to discuss silk for walls and curtains, gilded faucets and
doorknobs, moquette and color samples for the castello. And Susanne
offers to chauffeur me around in her Ferrari at every opportunity.
This morning I’m taking my Rolls-Royce Cabriolet after commis­
sioning the work for the castello. Susanne has arrived at the Piazza di
Spagna at six A.M. to see me one last time. I hug her on the Spanish
Steps, kissing her on the mouth for the first time. As I turn into Via del
196 K laus K inski

Babuino toward the Piazza del Popolo, she’s still Standing there, just
as I left her after the kiss.

On the first day I drive all the way to Marseilles. At three A.M. I go to
the hookers. I pick one who’s huddling in the gutter, and we go to a
seedy hotel. But it’s no fun. I return to my hotel and call up Susanne
in Rome.
From Marseilles I head for Barcelona. But this time none of the
hookers can turn me on. Not even the flamenco dancers. Not even the
Gypsy girls, whom I truly love.
When I arrive in Almeria, a wire from Susanne is waiting at the
hotel desk. She’s joining me tomorrow night. Pm so happy that I
throw a party with my Gypsies in a flamenco restaurant. The girls
dance in front of me on the tables, and I can see their pussy lips rub­
bing together.
One of the girls is the owner of the restaurant. I fuck her standing
in the tiny john behind the kitchen. Before driving back to the hotel, I
jump into the sea.
Susanne has already asked for me and is standing at the desk,
pale and tired. She has no valise, only a makeup kit. Instead of tak­
ing a commercial airline, she flew in a private jet. She had to land in
Málaga because there’s no airfield in Almeria. She took a cab to
cover the winding hundred and twenty miles from Málaga. Her fa­
ther alerted bloodhounds in all airports: They’re supposed to catch
Susanne and bring her home. At four A.M. she has to get back to
Málaga, where her plane is taking off at seven. It’s ten P.M. We’ve
got six hours.
Susanne is inhibited and awkward, as if she’s worried about satis­
fying me. I hick her seriously, with all my devotion: I’m tender, brutal,
 Kinski Uncut 197

and ruthless. She glows and smells and kicks and foams at the mouth.
We fall asleep, intoxicated and satisfied. . . .
I don’t notice when Susanne slides quietly out of bed, dresses,
and vanishes. The second time the desk clerk wakes me up, I find Su-
sanne’s letter, which she wrote in the bathroom to avoid making any
noise. I get a hard-on when I read the sentence “I hope I wasn’t too
clumsy in bed. . . .”
I get dressed because the phone’s ringing a third time.

In the streets of Almeria the shoeshine boys, who are all Gypsies, spit
on their customers’ shoes and clap their hands when they toss their
brushes aloft like jugglers. Spotting me, they abandon the stunned
tourists and shout at me across the street. They know I love it when
they do a few flamenco steps for me in the middle of the roadway, in
the heart of the traffic; they fanatically puff out their chests, and their
faces take on an earnest, painful expression.
Susanne comes again. I’ve got time off, so we drive to Málaga. She
has to leave in two days. I have to go to Barcelona. Susanne joins me
and remains for one night. Comes again. Leaves again. And comes
again, wherever I am.
Meanwhile Biggi and Nasstja have moved into the castello be­
cause the remodeling is as good as finished. When I return from
Spain, Biggi yells that she’s gonna pack her things and leave me
forever. During those ten weeks in Spain I never once called, wired,
or wrote—which I have always done, despite all my whoring, except
from Prague. I know that our marriage is totally on the rocks, but I
love Biggi and try to talk her into staying in Rome. It’s no use.
“You’d go to bed with your own daughter!” she shrieks, beside
herself, and storms out of the house.
198 K laus K inski

I can’t find her that day, nor does Nasstja know where she has
gone. Nasstja looks for her.
I find Biggi in a corner of the hothouse: She’s sitting on the floor
among flowerpots that hang overhead or stand on long tables. They’re
filled with orchids that are spotted like wildcats; this is the first time
that I’m aware of how beautiful they are. Biggi refuses to look at me.
Touching a flower, she is as amazed as a child: “I was firmly con­
vinced that Nasstja and I would be living in this paradise. And now
you’ve destroyed everything.”
“But I rented the place only for your sakes!”
“That may be. I actually believe that you were sincere. But we
can’t stay on with you. We can’t live in a house to which you return af­
ter your bouts of whoring. Tomorrow I’m flying to Berlin with
Nasstja, and I’ll be looking for a new apartment.”
I drive Biggi and Nasstja to the airport. Before passing through
the checkpoint, Biggi starts crying. She feels, as I do, that it’s all over.
Nasstja throws her arms around Biggi’s legs and buries her face in her
mother’s lap.
“Why are you sending us away . . . ?”
“I’m not sending you away, Biggi. You don’t want to stay
with me.”
Everything I say sounds meaningless. For Biggi is right. Basically,
I’m the one who’s been sending her away for years without meaning
to. She’s still crying on the other side of the barrier. Nasstja keeps
looking back at me as she stumbles along, holding Biggi’s hand. Tears
come to my eyes.
I ring up Susanne from the airport. I want to go to the seashore
with her and not think of anything. In Fiumicino we board her father’s
yacht and sail to Sardinia, where her parents own a mammoth hotel.
That’s where her brothers’ yachts are anchored, as is her mother’s
luxury ship, which is the size of a small ocean liner.
 Kinski Uncut 199

Susanne moves in with me on Via Appia, bringing along a portion

of her wardrobe. Wherever we go in Rome, we’re hounded by pa­
parazzi, and the gossips have a field day.

Pasolini shows up at the castello with a horde of young men af­

ter sending me the script of his next movie, Porcile. He wants
to talk to me. Pola is visiting because Susanne has to spend some
time with her family. I don’t feel like going down to the salon. I call
up Susanne, who’s called from Milan, and I tell Pola that she
should entertain Pasolini and his coterie while I’m on the phone.
Gino is also here.
One hour later I go downstairs. An awkward atmosphere has de­
veloped because I’ve made Pasolini cool his heels all that time.
I apologize for my behavior and say that I’ve been reading the
script but that I don’t understand it. Actually, Gino outlined the crap
for me.
It’s true that the plot’s a little weird. The lead, whom I’m sup­
posed to play, is a guy who’s so hungry that he mugs a well-built sol­
dier and eats him up. He’s also turned on by the muscular body parts
of his food. After all the garbage I’ve had to be in, this’ll pass. But not
the salary. Doria, the producer, is one of the best in Italy, but if I al­
ways got the starvation wages he offers me I’d be hungry enough to
gobble up Doria. Or Pasolini. Gino and I have agreed to raise my
price with every new film. That’s why he isn’t disappointed when the
contract doesn’t materialize.

I Bastardi (Sons of Satan) with Margareth Lee and Rita Hayworth, in

Spain. Susanne wanted to fly with me but ultimately doesn’t join me
till later on. Margareth is friends with a hairstylist, whom she brings
200 K laus K inski

along to Madrid. I want to seduce the hairstylist, who’s such an invet­

erate lesbian that she smacks my hand whenever I feel up Margareth.
I invite them to my suite at the Palace Hotel and dance with the
hairstylist while Margareth jerks off on the bed. I’ve already got my
finger inside the hairdresser’s little pussy—but then the doorbell
rings. When I open the door, ready to yell at the party-pooper, I find
Susanne, who hugs me passionately. She could have called or wired! I
draw out our greeting in the vestibule as long as possible so that the
two women inside can straighten up their clothes. Before introducing
Susanne, I whisper to her: “They’re two dykes. They were about to
leave.”

I’ve switched cars again. Out of seven Ferraris I’ve ruined four, and
now I’m trading in my sixth Rolls for another Ferrari. With the last
trade-in I lost about 40,000 marks. During these four years in Rome,
I’ve bought and traded in sixteen cars. Three Maseratis, seven Fer­
raris, and six Rolls-Royces. I’ve poured 300,000 marks into the
house even though it doesn’t belong to me. I’ve got a staff of seven: a
chauffeur, a gardener, two maids, a butler, a cook, and a secretary.
My secretary alone costs me over 7,000 marks a month. Living
expenses run to some 8,500 a month. Russian caviar and cham­
pagne, which any jerk gets from me, cost about 10,000 marks. Mail­
men and gas men likewise often get a glass. Even the firemen who
hooked their hoses up to my water when they had to put out a gas fire
next door.
It’s mainly journalists who booze and chow down in the castello.
A German newspaperwoman pukes on a Chinese rug because her
googly eyes were bigger than her stomach. She then writes in a glossy
mag that I gobble caviar by the spoonful.
Further expenses include clothes, travel, gasoline, telephone bills
 Kinski Uncut 2 0 1

of 8,000 to 10,000 marks, and my constant parade of cars, which eat

up a fortune. Though I race from one film to another—as many as
eleven a year, once even three simultaneously—and my daily salary
has shot up to 50,000 marks, I constantly need money. Since the days
of the pawnbroker who took my mother’s wedding ring, only the
numbers have changed.
The next two projects are a war movie in northwest Italy and a
gangster flick in Genoa. Susanne races her Ferrari through fog and
snow flurries along the icy thruway from Milan to Montecatini,
Livorno, and Genoa. For a night. For a day. For a couple of hours. If
Susanne can’t get away, I dash off to Milan in my Ferrari when the
shooting’s done. For a night. For a couple of hours. We meet at the
Principe e Savoia, where Susanne keeps a suite aside from her pad in
Milan and Moratti’s houses.
Susanne is at the end of her rope. The nine and a half months
with me have wiped her out. She has a physical and mental break­
down and has to be hospitalized in Switzerland.

Outside a tiny hamlet in the mountain jungles of South Vietnam, near

Dâlat, where the Moi nation lives, a four-year-old child is crying. The
little girl knows nothing about the filthy war that has been exterminat­
ing her people for over ten years now. She knows nothing about the
patrols of invaders or the Vietcong stealing through the jungle. And
she knows nothing about the tiger pit into which she plunged that af­
ternoon. She didn’t see it because the villagers camouflage the traps
with bamboo reeds.
The little girl is screaming because she tore her lower thigh when
she fell in. She screams and screams. But no one hears her. The pit,
thirteen feet deep, swallows up the slightest noise and doesn’t let any
sound get out.
202 K laus K inski

When darkness fell—suddenly, as it does in the jungle—the vil­

lagers stopped searching for the little girl, who hadn’t come home
from playing.
Eventually the little girl’s screams grow weaker and weaker and
then die out altogether. Only the pig in the bamboo cage, whose smell
is meant to attract a tiger, squeals in fear.
The little girl has fallen asleep; she hears neither the squealing of
the pig nor the soft snarling of the tiger. The predator, drawn by the
scent of the pig, is stealing around the edge of the pit, which is three
feet by seven feet wide.
At daybreak the villagers resume their search for the little girl.
They discover the spoor of the tiger, whose pawprints are clear in the
damp soil. The trail leads to the tiger trap. When the villagers, armed
with bamboo spears, creep up to the pit, the most courageous man
cautiously peeps over the edge in order to tell the others how big the
tiger is. But no tiger snarls at him. Instead the little girl smiles up at
him. She’s stuck her tiny fingers through the dense bars of the bam­
boo cage and is petting the sleeping pig.
Minhoi, the four-year-old from the tiger trap, is nineteen today and
standing across from me. I hug her and try to kiss her, as if I already
knew her story and had been waiting all these fifteen years for this very
moment, waiting to hug and kiss this girl whom I’ve never set eyes on
before and who seems to be the fulfillment of my yearning for love.
The mysterious, shocking beauty of her exotic face is further em­
phasized by her aggressive look, that of a captured animal that has
been dragged to civilization and is as out of place here, on Rome’s Via
Appia Antica, as in the rest of the so-called civilized world. Annoyed
and indignant at my pushiness, she brusquely extricates herself from
my arms.
Her long, full hair, which is the color of sharply roasted chest­
nuts, falls heavily down. Her eyebrows form two sickle moons over
 Kinski Uncut 203

the dark, remote eyes. The regularity of her oval face balances her fe­
line cheekbones. Her ocher skin has no creases, not even under her
eyes. The upper and lower lips of her shimmering violet mouth are
evenly arched and so silently earnest that the noisy chatter of the other
guests vanishes from my ears.
Her figure is as childlike as that of most Vietnamese women. Her
breasts are barely hinted at by her white trapeze-shaped minidress un­
der the open leopardskin coat, which, like her body, emanates an in­
toxicating Oriental perfume. Her slender, childlike hands are hot and
soft, and her black fingernails are as long as those of a Chinese
princess.
I’m throwing a party at my castello. I’ve invited all my friends,
telling them to bring along whomever they like. But none of the guests
knows this Vietnamese woman. She didn’t arrive with anyone, and no
one saw her come in.
The tables are groaning with caviar and champagne and all kinds
of goodies. Rock music is booming from the loudspeakers. The guests
are eating, drinking, chatting, laughing, dancing. Everyone can do
whatever he likes, and I don’t worry about anybody.
I’m not angry at her for reprimanding me so sharply. It was my
fault. But what can I do to get her to love me? I am certain that I have
found my true love.
My brain is working feverishly. First I have to get her out of this
hubbub. But how? On what pretext? Chance comes to my rescue:
She’s hungry—at least a little—for she tries to make her way toward
the table with the caviar, on which the guests have descended like pi­
ranhas. I struggle through the gluttonous crowd, shovel three ladle­
fuls of caviar onto a gold plate, pile up mountains of Nova Scotia
salmon, thinny-thin slices of ham, and white truffle shavings on an­
other plate, wedge an open bottle of Dom Pérignon under my arm,
and look for Minho’f.
204 K laus K inski

She’s standing at the ten-foot-high baroque fireplace, warming

herself on the blazing flames, which, together with hundreds of flick­
ering candles, illuminate the salon. But she still seems to be freezing,
despite the leopardskin coat.
There’s no chair anywhere in the salon, no armchair, no vacant
place on a couch for Minhoi to sit. This is my chance. I tell her that
she can eat and drink in my blue room, and I lead her down half a
flight. The footmen in their white gloves and livery try to kindle a fire
in the blue room, but I send them away and start the fire myself.
In the blue room, with heavy blue Italian silk on the walls, floor-
length silk curtains at the windows, and a blue-patterned Chinese rug
on the floor, there is no furniture but a French bed covered with blue
silk. Light is provided by a candlestick on the fireplace mantel.
I set the plates on the silk bedcover and ask Minhoi to sit on the
bed. But she eats standing.
“Do you have any cocaine?” she suddenly asks, like a child look­
ing forward to chocolate pudding after eating its veggies.
“No. None. And I don’t want you to sniff any, either.”
“Hash?”
“Nope. Anyway, sit down when you eat, otherwise you won’t di­
gest it.”
“If you don’t have something, then it’s unbearable.”
“What?”
“Life.”
“That’s not true. But if you eat nicely, I’ll get you some.”
As fast as I can without falling, I tear up the steps to the salon and
ask everyone I meet whether he’s got any hash. A girl hands me a
joint, I light it on the spot. When I try to storm down the steps to the
blue room, some chick gets in my way.
“Do it! Fuck me! I want you to fuck me! Now!”
I shove her aside and jump down the seven steps to the blue room
 Kinski Uncut 2 05

in one fell swoop, tortured by the fear that Minhoi might have left. She
emerges from the toilet as I push open the door to the blue room. I
hand her the joint, and she inhales the blue smoke, drawing deeply.
After finishing the joint, she stretches out on the bed. She’s
relaxed. . . .
The final guests have left. It’s growing light outside. The first
larks are chirping. . . . The day is coming, full of sweetness, just as
Minhoi has come into my life.

Out in the garden Enrico is washing the Rolls-Royce or the Ferrari

while the gardener is raking the gravel. The splashing of the water and
the crunching of the gravel are driving me up the wall. I buzz the
kitchen on the house telephone and tell Clara, my housekeeper, to
have them all get the hell out of here, even the cook. I want to be alone
with Minhoi.

Minhoi’s belongings are still in Paris, where she’s been living till now
and where she attended school from the time she was seven. I loot the
Roman boutiques for her, buying anything she likes. If she can’t find
her gloves because she forgot them in Paris, I buy her twenty pairs. If
her leotard has a run, I buy her fifty new ones of all sorts and colors. If
it’s too cold for her leopardskin, I buy her an ankle-length sable. If her
shoe is too tight, I buy her piles of new shoes. And if she needs lip­
stick or nail polish, I blow a couple of thousand marks on new
makeup. I give away the Rolls-Royce Cabriolet and buy a Rolls-Royce
Phantom with a built-in bar.
I order a dark-blue thirty-foot trailer that looks like a Pullman car.
The wall coverings, tablecloths, bedclothes, curtains, pillows, and
cushions are pure silk. The floor is carpeted with velour. The doors
206 Klaus K inski v

and closets are teak. The handles, faucets, and doorknobs are gilded.
The silk window shades have pictures of clouds. Vestibule, living
room, dressing room, and bedroom are separated by sliding doors.
Air-conditioning, heating, TV, radio, tape recorder, cassette player,
stereo, and radio telephone are installed in the wall cabinets. Soft light
is provided by wall brackets with frosted-glass globes. Bulbs are
mounted in the two high crystal mirrors. We eat by candlelight. A
special unit supplies power for the trailer, and the staff consists of a
chauffeur, a servant, and a cook.
The trailer is for Minhoi, who accompanies me to all countries,
even at night, whenever I’m shooting. No luxury is too expensive for
her. Minhoi is delighted at everything I do for her. But she’s always so
speechless and incredulous, as if I’ve done something wrong. I still
don’t understand that all this extravagance is totally useless.
Though I don’t have the least grounds, I’m so jealous that I can
barely stand it if Minhoi so much as calls up a girlfriend in Paris.
When she writes letters, I throw them away. Likewise any mail she re­
ceives. If someone calls up, I say she’s out. I don’t want Minhoi to take
even one step alone. I’m constantly worried about her.
When she strolls through our garden and I lose sight of her for
even an instant, I look for her desperately, as if I’ve lost her. I wade
through the man-high grass of the endless grounds, I scour the over­
grown bushes and tangled blackberry brambles, and I crawl through
the ruins of the ancient catacombs, which abut the thorn-covered wall
several hundred yards from the house. If she’s not where I think she is
in the gigantic castello, I comb all the floors until I find her. I even
wake up with a start if she’s rolled over and I don’t feel her body or at
least her hand.
I don’t want to crowd Minhoi, and I know that I myself can’t live
in this constant tension. If my imagination bolts in my dreams even
though Minhoi’ is lying next to me, then what’s going to happen if I
 Kinski Uncut 2 0 7

ever really have to spend a day without her? I shoo away these
thoughts because I can’t even picture such a situation.
It takes Minhoi’s Asian soul a long time to adjust to the dreadful
extremes in my character. On the one hand, I’m irritable, I fly off the
handle too easily, I react too quickly. My French is bad, but I’m impa­
tient if Minhoi doesn’t understand me right away, and these misun­
derstandings, behind which I suspect the most subtle schemes,
poison my mind and my soul. I’m desperate. I have a low frustration
tolerance, and my outbursts are unlimited. On the other hand, I’m
considerate to the point of self-sacrifice, and my love is so immense
that it terrifies Minhoi.
Yet the more Minhoi comprehends my anxiety about her, the
more she gradually takes in my love (which originally terrified her),
the more sensitive she becomes and the less often she leaves my side.
To keep me calm, she never answers the phone. And she doesn’t call
people anymore. Nor does she write to her friends. She tosses her ad­
dress book into the burning fireplace before my very eyes.
One has to love me the way Minhoi loves me to understand me
and put up with me. I soon improve my French, which I used to
“speak like a Spanish cow,” as Minhoi lovingly teases me. And from
her I learn patience and self-control. In this way the little girl from the
tiger trap in Vietnam has become my teacher and is transforming my
entire life.

Today I look for Minhoi everywhere—in the house, the garden, the
most remote corners of our property. I cussed her out in a jealous fit
and told her I can’t stand living with her anymore. Which is the
biggest paradox, since Minhoi is my life.
As darkness sets in, I find her in the tower room. I’ve never
looked for her there because she normally wouldn’t climb up the
208 Klaus K inski

stairs—she’s afraid of the bats that fly in and out. She hasn’t switched
on the light. It’s dark. I almost trip over her. I touch her face, which
is drenched with tears. I kiss her and beg her to forgive me. Then I
go to the kitchen to rustle up something to eat. It’s Sunday and the
staff is gone.
When I return to the tower, Minho'i is slumped over. An empty
vial of sleeping pills is on the floor. I wrench her to her feet and try
forcing her to walk up and down. I’ve heard that this helps in an
overdose case: The blood circulation, the nervous system, and the
entire organism are yanked away from the narcotic, which is starting
to paralyze them. Minhoi can’t walk; I have to support her. Nor can
she speak; she can only babble. She embraces me lovingly and kisses
me on the mouth when I shake her in my panic, and her face falls on
my face.
I feel I’m losing my mind. I have to take her out to the fresh air! I
carry her down the spiral staircase to the fourth floor. The elevator
has a short circuit. On the stairway to the salon, she collapses in my
arms. I carry her to the blue room. Her pulse is racing so wildly that
I can’t feel individual beats. She moans, rattles, reaches for her
throat, gasps for air. I tear open the windows, dash down the steps
to the kitchen, and grab a bottle of cold milk. On the way, I kneel on
the steps.
“God! Please don’t let Minhoi die—she’s just taught me how
to live!”
When I return to the blue room, Minhoi* has tumbled from the
bed and is writhing convulsively on the floor. If the milk doesn’t
counteract the pills, it’ll at least make her throw up. But after I’ve
poured most of the milk down her throat, Minhoi neither improves
nor vomits.
I call up all the doctors I know. No one answers. They’re all out in
this beautiful weather. Minhoi can’t breathe. Her face turns blue. I
 Kinski Uncut 2 09

massage her heart, press my mouth on hers, and squeeze my breath

into her throat. Then I drag her to the bathroom and run cold water
over her face, the back of her neck, her heart, and her pulses. . .
Minhoi has thrown up, she’s weathered the crisis. I don’t let her
out of my arms for three days. She tells me about her past life for the
first time.
The night I met her, Minhoi asked me for coke and hash. Now I
see why. She’s no addict. Nor does she drink—not even wine—and
she doesn’t smoke.
In Paris she tried drugs, including LSD, a couple of times, be­
cause she can’t stand life. Life in Paris. Life in Europe. Life any­
where in the world, ever since they pulled her up like a plant from
the Vietnamese jungle of her childhood. At seven she began to real­
ize that her nation and her world were being systematically extermi­
nated, and that she couldn’t go back because her relatives had all
been wiped out. She could no longer endure life without drugging
herself.
Now that Minhoi is certain of my love and knows that I can’t live
without her, and now that I’m beginning to understand her and we
both realize that we’ve lived solely to meet each other, she starts re­
gaining confidence in her own life. She becomes the yardstick by
which I measure myself from now on.
She makes me conscious of what I’m living for. She manages to
do something that no one has succeeded in doing all these years: She
teaches me how to handle money. She convinces me that I don’t have
to treat every Tom, Dick, and Harry to caviar and champagne and
that no one has the right to throw ten million lire a month out the win­
dow. We don’t need a driver, who merely stands around and is never
satisfied. We don’t need a gardener who does nothing but continu­
ously rake gravel in one and the same place. Minhoi tells me to dismiss
my secretary, who keeps handing me the same unpaid bills, which I
210 K laus Kinski

keep paying because I never check them. We don’t need a cook who
lugs my food to her home every month while serving us yesterday’s
leftovers. We don’t need a butler and two maids. We don’t have to
have a Rolls-Royce or a Ferrari. And we can do without the castello.
She asks me if I’ve forgotten what I really want. Have I forgotten my
sailboat? My freedom?
I once agreed to buy the house from Count Marcello, a Venetian
who owns the property on Via Appia Antica. But now I don’t sign the
sales contract. Minho’i is right. It’s all bullshit. In a couple of years I’ll
be at the seashore, and in my “roaring forties” I’ll forget all about the
human ghettos and their prisons and lunatic asylums. The sums I de­
manded for my work and then squandered were tranquilizers for a life
in which I felt hopelessly trapped.
We move out of the castello. I don’t get back a penny of the money
I put into it. I dismiss the servants. I keep only Clara, who’s going to
take care of our apartment on Flaminia Vecchia.
I’m still not completely cured when I give up the Rolls-Royce: I
buy a Maserati instead.

Westerns. One after another. They get shittier and shittier, and the
so-called directors get lousier and lousier. And the more incompetent
they are, the more hostile they act. One of them is named Mario
Costa. When I refuse to follow his orders, he threatens me: “I’ll make
sure you get kicked out of Italy!”
“Why? I haven’t broken any law and I have a right to be here.”
“In any case you’ll never do another movie.”
“You shouldn’t have said that, you pathetic jerk. No one, aside
from God and myself—and certainly not a worm like you—is going to
decide when I stop making movies. And by then you’ll be moldering
in your grave!”
 Kinski Uncut 211

Biggi and Nastassja live in Munich. During the past year and a half,
Biggi’s never stopped hoping that we would get together again. I have
to make it clear to her that I can never return. She doesn't know what
Minhoi means to me.
In letters and endless phone conversations I try to explain it to
Biggi. And eventually she agrees to the divorce.
Minhoi and I dash around to get a marriage license. When the
registration official asks for the names of her parents, Minhoi starts
trembling. She gets so choked up that she can’t speak, and she clings
to me. I take her into my arms. She tearfully whispers to me that she’s
an orphan and never knew her parents. I signal to the official to ask no
more questions. The man has a heart and leaves the questions unan­
swered on the form. It’s only when we reach the stairs that I get the
full impact of what Minhoi has told me.
On May 2, a radiant spring Sunday, Minhoi and I get married in
Rome. The ceremony at the Capitol has to be delayed for hours. The
civil magistrate is raided by the photographers’ flashlights and the
whirring TV and newsreel cameras.
“When do we start?” he shouts, feeling superfluous.
“When I say so,” I retort. “This is my wedding!”
But the clicking and popping soon get too much for us. I take a
long swig from the champagne botde.
“Quick!” I shout to the magistrate.
The magistrate, a retired colonel with a sash, begins spouting his
horrible formula.
“It’s no use reeling all that off,” I break in. “My wife speaks only
French.”
“I know French,” says the former colonel, and his bloodless lips
purse voluptuously to pour out his crap in French.
212 K laus Kinski

“Oh, no, not French,” I correct myself. “She speaks only Chi­
nese. Do you know Chinese too?”
The whole mob cracks up. Photographers and cameramen seize
the opportunity and they click and whir like crazy.
“No, I don’t,” says the colonel, his face a bright crimson.
“Well, then you’d best hold your tongue,” I say, reaching for the
champagne bottle, which I’ve left with one of the photographers.
“If you don’t behave as is suitable for such a dignified place, then
I will refuse to perform the wedding,” the insolent jerk snaps, remov­
ing his sash, without which he apparently can’t say his bit.
“Keep your girdle on and finish up!” I scream, beside myself be­
cause I’ve finally lost patience with this matchmaker.
It must have dawned on him that he’s gone too far, for he slips
back into his sash, from which he’d crept halfway out like a Houdini.
He limits himself to our names, dates of birth, nationality, date of
wedding, and so forth.
Then he asks us if we agree to enter into the marriage. I burst out
laughing.
“Why do you think we’ve put up with all this?!”
We sign the scrap of paper and, with the two girls who acted as
our witnesses, we hop into our Maserati and dash over to George’s,
the most expensive restaurant in Rome. After the meal I smash all the
plates and glasses and pay for the damage—it’s worth it. I feel as if I’ve
shattered the past.

Mario Costa is dead. Just as I prophesied, because he couldn’t keep

his damn trap shut. We sell off the Maserati and the trailer and buy
a Land Rover. We pack in our haversacks and leave Rome before
daybreak.
First we drive to Munich, where Werner Herzog is waiting for
 Kinski Uncut 2 13

me. He’s offered me the lead in a movie to be shot in Peru: Aguirre:

The Wrath of God.
Biggi gives us the apartment because she’s going to spend a year
in Venezuela, where Nastassja is attending school.
Back in Munich I bump into Helmut von Gaza in the street. He’s
just back from an Italian prison, where he was locked up for seducing
minor boys.
“What’s become of the others?” I ask, trying to pep him up.
“They found Prince Kropotkin dead on a Spanish island. He’d
been suffocated with a pillow.”
“What about Gustl?”
“I married Gustl. So she did become an aristocrat after all before
she died of cancer.”

Herzog, who’s producing the film, also wrote the script—and he

wants to direct it, too. I promptly ask him how much money he’s got.
When he visits me in my pad, he’s so shy that he barely has the
nerve to come in. Maybe it’s just a ploy. In any case, he lingers at the
threshold for such an idiotically long time that I practically have to
drag him inside. Once he’s here, he starts explaining the movie with­
out even being asked. I tell him that I’ve read the script and I know the
story. But he turns a deaf ear and just keeps talking and talking and
talking. I start thinking that he’ll never be able to stop talking even if
he tries. Not that he talks quickly, “like a waterfall,” as people say
when someone talks fast and furious, pouring out the words. Quite
the contrary: His speech is clumsy, with a toadlike indolence, long-
winded, pedantic, choppy. The words tumble from his mouth in sen­
tence fragments, which he holds back as much as possible, as if they
were earning interest. It takes forever and a day for him to push out a
clump of hardened brain snot. Then he writhes in painful ecstasy, as if
214 Klaus K inski

he had sugar on his rotten teeth. A very slow blab machine. An obso­
lete model with a nonworking switch—it can’t be turned off unless
you cut off the electric power altogether. So I’d have to smash him in
the kisser. No, I’d have to knock him unconscious. But even if he were
unconscious, he’d keep talking. Even if his vocal cords were sliced
through, he’d keep talking like a ventriloquist. Even if his throat were
cut and his head were chopped off, speech balloons would still dangle
from his mouth like gases emitted by internal decay.
I haven’t the foggiest idea what he’s talking about, except that he’s
high as a kite on himself for no visible reason, and he’s enthralled by
his own daring, which is nothing but dilettantish innocence. When he
thinks I finally see what a great guy he is, he blurts out the bad news,
explaining in a hardboiled tone about the shitty living and working
conditions that lie ahead. He sounds like a judge handing down a
well-deserved sentence. And, licking his lips as if he were talking
about some culinary delicacy, he crudely and brazenly claims that all
the participants are delighted to endure the unimaginable stress and
deprivation in order to follow him, Herzog. Why, they would all risk
their lives for him without batting an eyelash. He, in any case, will put
all his eggs in one basket in order to attain his goal, no matter what it
may cost, “do or die,” as he puts it in his foolhardy way. And he toler­
antly closes his eyes to the spawn of his megalomania, which he mis­
takes for genius. Granted, he sincerely confesses, he sometimes gets
dizzy thinking about his own insane ideas—by which, however, he is
simply carried away.
Then suddenly, out of a clear blue sky, he knocks me for a loop:
He tries to make me believe that he’s got a sense of humor. That is, he
almost unintentionally, sort of carelessly hints at it—and, half in jest,
he’s embarrassed, as if caught with his pants down.
If he initially applied some cheap tricks to get me drunk, he now
throws caution to the winds and starts lying through his teeth. He says
 Kinski Uncut 2 15

he enjoys playing pranks; you can go and steal horses with him, and
so forth. And since he’s already confessed all that, he doesn’t want to
hide the fact that he can now laugh his head off at his own roguish­
ness. While it’s quite obvious that I’ve never in my life met anybody so
dull, humorless, uptight, inhibited, mindless, depressing, boring, and
swaggering, he blithely basks in the glory of the most pointless and
most uninteresting punch lines of his braggadocio. Eventually he
kneels before himself like a worshipper in front of his idol, and he re­
mains in that position until somebody bends down and raises him
from his humble self-worship. After dumping these tons of garbage
(which stinks so horribly that I felt like puking), he actually pretends
to be a naive, innocent, almost rustic hick—a poetic dreamer, or so he
emphasizes, as if he were living in his own little world and didn’t have
the slightest notion of the brutal material side of things. But I can very
easily tell that he considers himself ever so cunning, that he’s waiting
in ambush, dogging my every step and desperately trying to read my
mind. He’s racking his brain, trying to determine how he can outfox
me in every clause of the contract. In short, he has every intention of
outwitting me.
Still and all, I agree to do the movie—but only because of Peru. I
don’t even know where it is. Somewhere in South America, between
the Pacific, the desert, and the glaciers, and in the most gigantic jungle
on earth.
The script is illiterate and primitive. That’s my big chance. The
jungle smolders in it like something that infects you when you see it, a
virus that invades you through your eyes and enters your blood­
stream. I feel as if I knew this land with the magical name in some
other lifetime. An imprisoned beast can never forget the reality of free­
dom. The caged bird cranes its neck through the bars to peer at the
clouds racing by.
I tell Herzog that Aguirre has to be crippled because his power
216 K laus K inski

must not be contingent on his appearance. I’ll have a hump. My right

arm will be longer than my left, as long as an ape’s. My left arm will be
shortened so that since I’m a southpaw I have to carry my sword on
the right side of my chest, and not in the normal way, on my hip. My
left leg will be longer than my right, so that I have to drag it along. I’ll
advance sideways, like a crab. I’ll have long hair—down to my shoul­
ders by the time we start shooting. I won’t need a phony hump, or a
costumer or a makeup man smearing me up. I will be crippled because
I want to be. I’ll get my spine used to my crippling. Just as I’m beauti­
ful when I want to be. Ugly. Strong. Feeble. Short or tall. Old or
young. When I want to be. The way I hold myself will lift the cartilage
from my joints and use up their gelatin. I will be crippled—today,
now, on the spot, this very instant. Henceforth everything will be
geared to my condition: costumes, cuirasses, scabbards, weapons,
helmets, boots, and so on.
I determine the costume: I tear a couple of pages out of books
showing Old Master paintings. I explain the changes I want, and I fly
to Madrid with Herzog to find armor and weapons. After days of rum­
maging through mountains of rusty scrap metal, I fish out a sword, a
dagger, a helmet, and a cuirass, which has to be trimmed because I’m
a cripple.
Traveling all the way to the jungle is the worst kind of agony.
Penned up in old-fashioned trains, wrecks of trucks, and cagelike
buses, we eat and camp out like pigs. Sometimes in Quonset huts or
other torture chambers. We can’t even think about getting any sleep.
We can barely breathe. No toilets, no way to wash. Many days and
nights. I stay dressed day and night; otherwise the mosquitoes would
eat me alive. I feel as if I’m standing under a nonstop jet of boiling wa­
ter. Indoors the heat is lethal. But outdoors it’s just as venomously
hot. Whole mountains of garbage, inundated by a cesspool of human
piss and shit. The populace tosses the ripped-out eyes and innards of
 Kinski Uncut 217

slaughtered animals into this sewage from hell. Huge carrion birds the
size of great Danes strut and squat on this horror as if it were their pri­
vate playground.
Wherever I go I see these disgusting Quonset huts. If only I
didn’t have to lay eyes on these half-finished cement barracks with
corrugated-iron roofs. Nothing is completed. Everything is aban­
doned halfway through, as if it had been surprised by the decay. Iron
window shades and fences jeer at you. Why?
Garbage heaps, sewage, eyes, innards, breeding grounds, carrion
birds and—TV antennas. Just like in New York, Paris, London,
Tokyo, or Hong Kong, but more loathsome.
The road into the wilderness is long and tortuous—but no abomi­
nation is too unbearable to escape this hell on earth.
And as if Minho'i and I were to be rewarded for our getaway, we
feel that our hair is becoming silkier, our skin softer, like the fur of
wild beasts that have been set free; our bodies are lither and suppler,
our muscles are tensing for a leap, our senses are more alert and re­
ceptive. Minho’i has never been more beautiful since the tiger trap in
Vietnam.
Swelling up from mosquito bites without having eaten or drunk
anything, we reel toward the next leg of our journey.
A little Inca girl stands on the runway for military aircraft. She’s
got a small monkey on her arm and she wants to sell it. But the terri­
fied monkey clings to the girl, afraid that the buyer might take
it away.
Here we clamber into ancient, battered transport planes for para­
troopers, and the propellers rage in my temples like pneumatic ham­
mers. A pungent stench, the odor of gasoline, hunger, thirst,
headaches, and stomach cramps, and no toilet here either. Pent up
and huddling together on the hot steel floor of the windowless plane.
Hour after hour. During the flight each passenger in turn can spend
218 Klaus Kinski

one moment climbing from the plane’s tomblike rear into the cockpit
and peering out through a tiny window. Far below, the green ocean,
thousands of miles of jungle, with a yellow tangle of vipers winding
through it—the biggest river network in the world.
Next, single-engine amphibians that have to nose-dive to avoid
missing that slim chance when the jungle opens—and promptly closes
again.
Then more trucks and bus cages. Indian canoes. And finally the
rafts, on which we stand, chained to one another, to the cargo, and to
the raft, as we shoot over raging rapids. Our fists clutching ropes, as if
we were making a laughable effort to halt runaway horses by clasping
their reins even though the horses have already plunged off a cliff. The
raft is too heavily loaded; the Indians warned us. But blowhard Her­
zog, arrogant and ignorant as he is, mocked their warnings and called
them ridiculous. We’re all in costume and fully equipped, because we
wanted to shoot while riding the rapids. Herzog misses out on the
grandest and most incomprehensible things because he doesn’t even
notice them. I keep yelling at the stupid cameraman through the thun­
der of our nose-dive, telling him to at least roll the camera because
we’re risking our lives. But all he says is that Herzog ordered him not
to press the button without his, Herzog’s, say-so.
I’m disgusted by this whole movie mob—they act as if you’re sup­
posed to shoot a flick in a pigpen.
My heavy leather costume, my long boots, helmet, cuirass, sword,
and dagger weigh over thirty pounds. If the raft were to capsize be­
cause of Herzog’s delusions of grandeur, I’d be doomed. I’d be un­
able to get out of my cuirass and leather doublet, which are buckled in
back. Besides, the rapids are cut through with a chain ofjagged reefs,
and their razorlike tips lurk under the spume like piranhas, sometimes
even looming out of the lashed waters.
And so, like a fired missile, we hurtle downstream while the steep
 Kinski Uncut 2 19

waves attack our raft like hysterical bulls and clap together way over
our heads. The air is filled with foam like white drool.
Suddenly, as if the plunging water had furiously spat us out, we
glide almost soundlessly along a calm and powerful branch of the river
in the middle of the jungle and deeper and deeper into its interior.
There it lies: the wilderness. It seizes me. Sucks me in—hot and naked
like the sweaty, sticky, naked body of a lovesick woman with all her
mysteries and wonders. I gape at the jungle and can’t stop marveling
and worshipping. . . .
Animals as graceful as in fairy tales . . . Plants strangling one an­
other in their embraces . . . Orchids stretched on stumps of rotten
trees like young girls on the laps of dirty old men . . . Radiant metallic-
blue butterflies as big as my head . . . Pearly floods of butterflies
alighting on my mouth and my hands—the panther’s eye blending
into the flowers . . . Frothy streams of flowers; green, red, and yellow
clouds of birds . . . Silver suns . . . Violet fogs . . . The kissing lips of
the fish . . . The golden song of the fish . . .
We’re going to be living exclusively on rafts for the next two
months. Drifting downstream toward the Amazon. Minhoi and I have
a raft to ourselves. We either float way ahead of the other rafts or lag
behind as far as possible. When night falls, we moor our raft to lianas.
Then I lie awake, diving into the galaxies and starry archipelagoes,
which hang down so low that I can reach out and feel them.
We have a small Indian canoe that we tie to the raft, towing it
along. If I don’t have to shoot, we sneak away in the canoe, searching
for cracks in the jungle wall. Sometimes we penetrate a tight slit that
may have never existed before and that will instantly close up again.
The water inside the flooded forest is so still that it barely seems af­
fected by our paddles, which we dip cautiously to avoid making any
noise.
Perhaps no boat has ever glided across these waters, perhaps no
220 K laus Kinski

man has set foot here in millions of years. Not even a native. We wait
without speaking. For hours on end. I feel the jungle coming nearer, the
animals, the plants, which have been watching us for a long while with­
out showing themselves. For the first time in my life I have no past. The
present is so powerful that it snuffs out all bygones. I know that I’m free,
truly free. I am the bird that has managed to break out of its cage—that
spreads its wings and soars into the sky. I take part in the universe.
Although I constantly try to keep out of his way, Herzog sticks to
me like a shithouse fly. The mere thought of his existence here in the
wilderness turns my stomach. When I see him approaching in the dis­
tance, I yell at him to halt. I shout that he stinks. That he disgusts me.
That I don’t want to listen to his bullshit. That I can’t stand him!
I keep hoping he’ll attack me. Then I’ll shove him into a side
branch of the river, where the still waters teem with murderous pira­
nhas, and I’ll watch them shred him to bits. But he doesn’t do it; he
doesn’t attack me. He seems unfazed when 1 treat him like a piece of
shit. Besides, he’s too chicken. He attacks only when he thinks he’ll
keep the upper hand. Herzog pounces on a native, an Indian who’s
taken the job to keep his family from starving and puts up with any­
thing for fear of being kicked out. Or else he assails a stupid, untal-
ented actor or a helpless animal. Today he ties up a llama in a canoe
and sends it tearing down the rapids—supposedly because this is re­
quired by the plot of the movie, which he wrote himself! I find out
about the llama only when it’s too late. The animal is already drifting
toward the whirlpool, and no one can save it. I spot it rearing in its
mortal fear and yanking at its fetters, struggling to escape its gruesome
execution. Then it vanishes behind a bend of the river, shattering
against the jagged reefs and dying a torturous death by drowning.
Now I hate that killer’s guts. I shriek into his face that I want to
see him croak like the llama that he executed. He should be thrown
alive to the crocodiles! An anaconda should strangle him slowly! A
 Kinski Uncut 22 1

poisonous spider should sting him and paralyze his lungs! The most
venomous serpent should bite him and make his brain explode! No
panther claws should rip open his throat—that would be much too
good for him! No! The huge red ants should piss into his lying eyes
and gobble up his balls and his guts! He should catch the plague!
Syphilis! Malaria! Yellow fever! Leprosy! It’s no use; the more I wish
him the most gruesome deaths, the more he haunts me.
We drift down the river all day long, shooting endlessly. Night
falls. Nevertheless we all gather ashore, where a night scene is to be
filmed. Herzog and his production morons haven’t even supplied illu­
mination—no flashlight, nothing. The night is pitch-black and we
keep falling on our faces, one after another. We tumble into swampy
holes, stumble over roots and tree trunks, run into the knives of
thorny palms, get our feet caught in lianas, and almost drown. The
area is teeming with snakes, which kill at night after storing up their
reserves of poison throughout the day. We’re completely exhausted,
and once again it’s been an eternity since we ate or drank anything, in­
cluding water. No one has a clue as to what, where, and why we’re
supposed to shoot in this garbage dump, which stinks to high heaven.
Suddenly, in full armor, I plunge into a swamp hole. The harder I try
to get my body out of the mud, the deeper I sink. Finally, in a blind fury, I
yell, “I’m splitting! Even if I have to paddle all the way to the Adantic!”
“If you split, I’ll ruin you!” says that wimp Herzog, looking scared
of the chance he’s taking.
“Ruin me how, you bigmouth?” I ask him, hoping he’ll attack me
so I can kill him in self-defense.
“I’ll shoot you,” he babbles, like a paralytic whose brain has soft­
ened. “Eight bullets are for you, and the ninth is for me!”
Whoever heard of a pistol or a rifle with nine bullets? There’s no
such thing! Besides, he has no firearm; I know it for a fact. He’s got no
rifle or pistol, not even a machete. Not even a penknife. Not even a
222 K laus K inski

bottle opener. I’m the only one with a rifle: a Winchester. I have a spe­
cial permit from the Peruvian government. To buy bullets I had to
spend days on end running my legs off from one police station to the
next for signatures, stamps, all that shit.
“I’m waiting, you vermin,” I say, truly glad that things have
reached this pass. “I’m going back to my raft now and I’ll be waiting
for you. If you come, I’ll shoot you down.”
Then I stride back to our raft, where Minhoi has fallen asleep in
her hammock; I load my Winchester and I wait.
At around four A.M. Herzog comes paddling up to our raft and
apologizes.
Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-
hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep. His so-called
“talent” consists of nothing but tormenting helpless creatures and, if
necessary, torturing them to death or simply murdering them. He
doesn’t care about anyone or anything except his wretched career as
a so-called filmmaker. Driven by a pathological addiction to sensa­
tionalism, he creates the most senseless difficulties and dangers, risk­
ing other people’s safety and even their lives—just so he can
eventually say that he, Herzog, has beaten seemingly unbeatable
odds. For his movies he hires retards and amateurs whom he can
push around (and allegedly hypnotize!), and he pays them starvation
wages or zilch. He also uses freaks and cripples of every conceivable
size and shape, merely to look interesting. He doesn’t have the foggi­
est inkling of how to make movies. He doesn’t even try to direct the
actors anymore. Long ago, when I ordered him to keep his trap shut,
he gave up asking me whether I’m willing to carry out his stupid and
boring ideas.
If he wants to shoot another take because he, like most direc­
tors, is insecure, I tell him to go fuck himself. Usually the first take is okay,
and I won’t repeat anything—certainly not on his say-so. Every scene,
 Kinski Uncut 223

every angle, every shot is determined by me, and I refuse to do any­

thing unless I consider it right. So I can at least partly save the movie
from being wrecked by Herzog’s lack of talent.
After eight weeks most of the crew are still living like pigs. Penned
together on rafts like cattle going to slaughter, they eat garbage fried in
lard, and, most dangerous of all, they guzzle the river water, which
can give them all kinds of diseases, even leprosy. None of them is vac­
cinated against any of these deadly scourges.
Minhoi and I cook alone on our raft. We dump soil on the
wooden floor and start a fire. If either of us dives into the river to swim
or wash, the other watches out for piranhas. Normally we have noth­
ing to cook, and we feed on fantastic jungle fruits, which contain
enough liquid. But these heavenly fruits are hard to get since we float
downstream almost nonstop, and often there are long stretches when
we can’t go ashore to look for produce.
Eventually we start feeling our malnutrition. We grow weaker;
my belly swells up, and I’m all skin and bones. The others are even
worse off.
The wilderness isn’t interested in arrogant bigmouth movie mak­
ers. It has no pity for those who flout its laws.
At three in the morning we’re violently awakened on our rafts.
We’re told there’s no time for breakfast, even coffee. We’ll only be
traveling for twenty minutes, up to the next Indian village on the river.
There we’ll get everything. The alleged twenty minutes turn into eigh­
teen hours. Herzog has exaggerated again.
With our heads in heavy steel helmets that get so hot from the
pounding sun that they burn us, we’re exposed to the ruthless heat for
days on end, without shelter, without the slightest shade, without
food or drink. People drop like flies. First the girls, then the men, one
after another. Almost everyone’s legs are festering from mosquito
bites and distorted by swelling.
224 K laus K inski s

Toward evening, we finally reach an Indian village, but it’s blaz­

ing away. Herzog set it on fire, and even though we’re starving and dy­
ing of thirst, reeling, exhausted after eighteen hours of infernal heat,
we have to attack the village—just as it says in the mindless script.
We spend the night in the village, camping in the miserable bar­
racks that haven’t burned down. Giant rats insolently frolic about, cir­
cling closer and closer, drawing nearer and nearer to our bodies.
They probably sense how feeble we are, and they’re waiting for the
right time to pounce on us. More and more of them appear.
Someone tells Herzog that his people can’t continue if we don’t
get better food and especially water. Herzog answers that they can
drink from the river. Besides, he goes on, they ought to collapse from
exhaustion and starvation: That’s what’s called for in the script. Her­
zog and his head producer have their own secret cache of fresh vege­
tables, fruit, French Camembert, olive oil, and beverages.
As we drift along, one of the Americans falls dangerously ill; he’s
got yellow fever and a high temperature, and he’s writhing on the raft.
Herzog claims that the American is malingering; he refuses to let him
be brought ashore at Iquitos, which is getting closer and closer.
When we’re near Iquitos and our rafts drift into the Amazon, we
ignore Herzog and carry our patient ashore, to a hospital. We take the
day off in order to buy the most necessary food, mineral water, ban­
dages, medicines, and salves for mosquito bites.
Ten weeks later the final scene of the movie is shot: Aguirre, the
sole survivor, his mind gone, is on his raft with several hundred mon­
keys, floating downstream toward the Atlantic. Most of the monkeys
on the raft jump into the water and swim back to the jungle. A gang of
trappers plans to sell them to American laboratories for experiments.
Herzog has borrowed them. When only some hundred monkeys are
left, waiting to dive into the waves and regain their freedom, I order
Herzog to film right away. I know that this opportunity won’t knock
 Kinski Uncut 225

twice. When the take is done, the last monkeys spring into the river
and swim toward the jungle, which receives them.
Minhoi and I have to spend three days in the Iquitos hospital get­
ting vitamin transfusions.
When the jet plane, amid the murderous booming of its turbines,
rises steeply, leaving the green sea of the jungle far below me, I launch
into a crying jag. My soul is so deeply shaken and my body so vio­
lently convulsed that I think my heart is about to rip open. I hide my
face from the other passengers, pressing it against the window and try­
ing to stifle my sobs. Imagine someone weeping because he has to
leave the wilderness, and because he’s not happy and grateful to be
back in the civilization ghettos, which are haunted by madness! If it’s a
human being, he’ll be locked up in a nuthouse, and if it’s an animal,
it’ll be put to sleep.
On the way back, Minhoi and I fly around the globe again. When
we finally reach Vietnam, Minhoi is happy. In Saigon a Vietnamese
teenager spits at me in the ricksha because he thinks I’m an American.
Once again, someone spitting at me! First it was the Belgians be­
cause I wasn’t American. Then American strafers shoot my mother
down. And now here in Vietnam, where Minhoi was orphaned by the
dirtiest of all wars, someone spits at me because he thinks I’m Ameri­
can! Maybe the boy thinks that I’m one of those men who at Christ­
mas sent home color Polaroids showing the corpses of massacred
women and children. Minhoi, next to me, cries. I jump out of the rick­
sha to chase after the teenager, who scurries away—but then a Viet­
namese soldier sticks a pistol into my chest, releasing the safety catch.
I have to pull myself together, choke back tears of rage, at this glaring
injustice. Nevertheless I love this nation more than any other in the
world.
The streets are filled with barricades of sandbags. A little boy, at
most seven or eight years old, stands there with gaping mouth and
226 Klaus Kinski

eyes, performing a pantomime. I don’t understand what he means!

Minhoi’s caught on. His body language says that he’s seen me in a
movie in which I play an American soldier who, with gaping mouth
and eyes, croaks in the hatch of a tank.
So we’re back in the human hell, the hell of adults.

Since we’re broke, I accept the very next offer that comes down the
pike. Like a streetwalker who takes any john. We have to go to Hol­
land, where the crap is being shot.
The American director (the word makes me sick) has been
dumped by his girlfriend, Joan, who’s run off with Maria Schneider.
Now the two girls are fucking their brains out. Maria has just finished
shooting that mindless flick Last Tango in Paris, and thinks she’s hot
stuff because Marlon Brando fucked her up the ass with butter. She
drags around books containing photos of Bedouins, which she shows
everyone, and she hands out cocaine. She shows me the books too.
These junkies always think that freedom has something to do with
their fucking drugs. Why does she show everyone these pictures of
desert Bedouins? I’ve lived with Bedouins, and they don’t need to trip
on drugs. That sleazy bitch gives Minhoi some coke behind my back.

In Amsterdam the Dutch have set up an entire museum for Van Gogh,
squeezing his paintings together like convicts in an overcrowded
prison, like animals trapped in a zoo. Five paces to the left. Five to the
right. Five in a circle. Here Van Gogh is spotlighted by electric lights
behind steel doors and secured with electric alarm systems, like a man
condemned to death. Every painting has a government stamp on it,
like a prison number.
The visitors line up as if they’re in a fast-food joint. They shuffle
 Kinski Uncut 22 7

forward in fits and starts. Next! They clutch information leaflets about
why Van Gogh sliced off his ear. Some visitors look battered. Others
gape blankly, irritated, embarrassed. Some whisper jokes, giggling
hysterically. A girl trembles. A man has tears in his eyes. Many hunt
for the exit from this stuffy museum, where probably no window is
ever opened. For lack of space the bleeding suns are squeezed one on
top of another like dying corpses in a mass grave. The smoldering
sunflowers. These hearts aching so dreadfully with passion and
yearning. Yes, dying corpses of executed men! They’re still alive! Like
lambs in slaughterhouses, piled up on other dying lambs after their
throats have been cut—then a slaughterer treads on the artery to make
sure they bleed properly.
I dash out of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. I have to puke in
the street.
I mustn’t end up like that!

I love Minhoi more than anything else in the world. I love her more
than my life. I love the magical beauty of her face and body. I love her
enchanting soul, which is full of wonders and full of mysteries. She is
my wife and my beloved and the future mother of my son, whom she
will bear. And yet our life together grows more and more painful.
She’s not to blame for our horrible fights—they’re all my fault. I’m so
hypersensitive, my imagination is so immense, and my reactions are
so violent, a natural catastrophe that tears everything along, leaving
only devastation behind. The contradictory forces in me fight to the
death and threaten to rip me apart. I feel as if I have to jump off a
tower!
Often Minhoi is so scared that she can’t do anything but weep.
Then she throws her arms out to me as if trying to stop the rage that’s
destroying me, to stop it with her delicate, beautiful hands.
228 K laus Kinski

Minhoi likewise loves me more than anything else in the world.

But she can’t stand my wild mood swings anymore. Everything about
me is gigantic and measureless. Even my concern for her. Even my
tenderness. Even my love. In any case, Minhoi says so. The violence
of my feelings brutalizes and bewilders her soul.
“Help me!” we sometimes scream at the same time, clinging to
one another as if we both were drowning.
We often talk about our son. Then everything is fine, and we’re
happy. We wonder what continent he’ll be born on. We make plans
and we dream about where our son will grow up. Maybe we’ll go to
the mountainous jungles of Vietnam; Minhoi* is so homesick for them.
Or we’ll go to the Himalayas, directly to the Ama Dablam. Or we’ll
live in Tierra del Fuego, where the glaciers float in the raging waters of
Cape Horn. Or should we sail across the oceans and never again set
foot on shore?
Making films means money. With money we can buy our freedom
from slavery. So I’ll keep making flicks. First two in Athens and on
Crete. One in Paris. One in Barcelona. Minhoi accompanies me
everywhere. I can’t take a step or draw a breath without her. But our
life together has become impossible. It’s a relentlessly vicious circle
from which there seems to be no escape—unless we split up. I refuse
to think that horrible thought. But both Minhoi and I know that a split
is racing toward us like a monstrous wave, faster and faster, and that
nothing can stop it. Separation is the only thing that can keep us from
destroying ourselves.

We’re back in Rome, where we rent a penthouse apartment opposite

Visconti’s and catercorner from the Villa Ada Park, which used to be
Mussolini’s residence. If a photographer’s calls become unbearable, I
agree to meet him at the entrance to the park. He doesn’t realize that I
 Kinski Uncut 229

can watch him from the roof of our building—all I have to do is climb
the fire escape from our terrace. If he looks all around because I
haven’t shown up, and he happens to glance in my direction, I duck
behind the chimney. After a while I cautiously emerge. I do that until
the photographer gets fed up and leaves. For a long time I haven’t
wanted to be photographed by anyone. I don’t want anyone to photo­
graph my soul, which is being etched more and more deeply in my
face. Besides, a photograph is a kind of prison, where my feelings will
be tortured to death.

I’ve fallen asleep on the deck chair on our terrace and when I awake,
Minhoi is gone. It won’t sink in; it’s so awful that I don’t get it. I feel as
if someone had knocked both my legs off with one stroke. I feel as if
I’ve been shoved back into the horror, the grave I’ve been trying to dig
my way out of all my life, always scared to death. It takes me a long
time—then the truth suddenly shoots through my head as if someone
had fired a bullet into my temple. Everything inside me is shrill. Tat­
tered. Bloody. Everything shrieks. An alarm goes off. Shrieks, shrieks,
shrieks for Minhoi. I dash out of the apartment. She left the door
ajar—probably to avoid making any noise. I keep yelling, “Minhoi!” I
break into a run; it has to be a joke! Maybe she’s playing hide-and-
seek. I laugh. But my laughter isn’t genuine. The alarm in my head
signals something that I’ve been fearing for a long time.
I dash into the bathroom and yank the shower curtain aside as if I
were sure that I’ve discovered her hiding place. I peer into the tub.
Into the niche containing the toilet and the bidet. I crawl under the
bed—then jump up, as if I’d heard a noise that she has made while
changing her hiding place. I yank all the closet doors open. I whirl
around as if to surprise her, in case she tries to sneak into a new hiding
place. I sprint back to the terrace. I climb up to the roof. Back into the
230 Klaus K inski

apartment: shower, tub, commode, bidet, under the bed, in closets,

even in drawers. Yes, even drawers and bookcases, behind the
books, in the kitchen, in the icebox, in the kitchen cabinets, in
the oven . . . My head is spinning. . . . I bump my forehead. . . . I
grab the receiver . . . unable to dial a single digit. What for? No one’ll
know where she is. I dash down the five flights—the elevator is too
slow for me. She’s not in the garage. I race back up the five flights.
Again the terrace, the roof, the kitchen, the bed, the closets, the bath­
room, the shower, the tub, the commode, the bidet . . . And once
again down the five flights, this time out into the street.
It’s almost dark. Where should I go? Where should I look for
her? My paralyzing numbness slowly settles, like gaseous fumes, as if I
were getting on my feet again after being clubbed to the ground. As if
hard on her heels, I tear off haphazardly in one direction for miles on
end. Then in the opposite direction. Then I hang a sharp right. A
sharp left. I must have stepped on broken glass—I’m bleeding like a
pig. I didn’t notice; I haven’t even noticed that I’m barefoot. I.run
back. Once again up the five flights . . . this time directly from the
street entrance, without passing through the courtyard and the
garage. I couldn’t bear to run into the concierge. . . . Who knows—
maybe Minhoi is back again? Once I’m back in our apartment, I feel
so dizzy that I can’t stay on my feet. My knees buckle; I cry, begging
for Minhoi’s return! I don’t know who I’m praying to. My prayer is
aimed at the universe. At life! At love! I pray that I may be tortured,
that I may be hurt—as long as I get Minhoi back. Yes! Let them pour
all pains and torments on me, all the disgusting garbage that people
are capable of inflicting on one another. So long as I don’t have to live
without my Minhoi! I also pray to Minhoi. I pray to our son: “You are
the light that shines for me in my darkness. Never lose your faith in
me, just as I can never lose my faith in you!”
The doorbell rings. I’m so startled, my body feels as if I’d had an
 Kinski Uncut 2 3 1

electric shock. When I open the door, Minhoi is standing on the

threshold. Her childlike hands are clutching a small floral wreath that
she holds out to me. My God! Do you first have to go through hell in
order to be as happy as I am now?
From now on I’m obsessively haunted by the fear that Minhoi
could leave me at any moment. What should I do? How should I act
in the future? (As if I could be any way other than as Nature has cre­
ated me!)
Maybe she can’t stand the way I dress? Should I throw all my
clothes away? What should I put on? Maybe she wants me to restyle
my hair? Shorter? Or a lot longer? Maybe she doesn’t like my being
blond? Or having blue eyes? Maybe I don’t tell her often enough
how beautiful she is? T hat’s not possible; no one in the world can
tell a woman how beautiful she is more often than I tell Minhoi.
Don’t I tell her often enough that I love her? I say it so often that I
think she doesn’t want to hear it so often! Why shouldn’t I keep say­
ing it over and over again, a thousand times, a million times! The
words “I love you” are so beautiful when you really mean them.
Have I never told her how intelligent she is, or have I not told her of­
ten enough? My God, how often have I done the wrong thing, said
the wrong thing? Am I incapable of treating her right? Haven’t I told
her often enough how much I like the things she cooks for me?
Don’t I say it several times a day, whenever I eat? Have I unwittingly
forgotten to say so? Don’t I thank her enough for everything she
does for me? When she washes or fixes something for me? Should I
buy her more clothes? Or rings and necklaces? Does she resent me
for not earning enough at the moment because I’ve alienated every­
one? Doesn’t she know that it’s only a question of time before I’m
back making as many pictures as I want, and that no one can stop
me? Is it taking too long for her? Should I accept any movie, no mat­
ter how far away, just so that we can get out of here, now, instantly?
232 K laus K inski

I can achieve anything I like. I’m capable of doing anything that’s

asked of me.
I know it’s all absurd. Among people, I would only get more
emotionally deformed than I already am. / ’m to blame! // I’m the
only reason she’ll leave me. Not only as I am, but the very fact that I
am! All my love, all my good resolutions and efforts, can’t hold out
against the burning lava that comes pouring out of the volcano of
my innards and often has such devastating effects. And it may be
too late each time. Each time. I’m not afraid of anything. Only that
Minhoi may leave me—at any moment. Daytime, nighttime—I
don’t have the nerve to step from one room to another without leav­
ing the door wide open, even the bathroom door. Meanwhile, Min­
hoi says she doesn’t want to leave the bathroom door open! I’m
scared she might climb out the bathroom window: The fire escape
leads to the roof, and from there you can flee across other terraces.
I don’t dare shower, much less wash my hair, because I might not
hear the apartment door opening. Sometimes I race out of the
shower to see whether Minhoi is still here. At night I often sit up
and reach for her. At times I scream because I don’t feel her there.
The bed is empty. I switch on the light and look for her every­
where. She’s sitting on the commode, half asleep. I never leave the
house without her. I don’t even let her go shopping alone. I make
no appointments with anybody. Not without Minhoi. In this way
we’re gonna starve to death, for I never have money if I’m not
working. It’s worst when I have to shoot. Minhoi doesn’t want to
come along because it’s strenuous and mind-numbing. Besides, I
wouldn’t have a calm minute if I was standing in front of the camera
and not seeing her uninterruptedly.
If I’m filming, or if I just have to talk to someone, all I can think
about is Minhoi and getting back to her. The instant I’m done with
work, I yell for the car, and every passing second is a stab in my heart,
 Kinski Uncut 2 3 3

and I think I’m losing it. Once I’m at the apartment door, I first listen.
If there’s only silence, I’m terrified that Minhoi is gone. If I hear a
noise, I know she’s home.
This is my living hell. And there’s no end in sight.

Whenever we go to the park of the Villa Ada, we feel as if we’re far

away, in our future. We meet a friend of Minhoi’s, a girl she went to
school with in Paris. She’s got her newborn baby and she lets Minhoi
hold it so that Minhoi can feel what it’s like to hold a baby. But Min­
hoi looks bewildered and tries to return the baby swiftly, like a mother
who’s accidentally being given the wrong child. When her friend
doesn’t take the baby back right away because she’s preparing a fresh
diaper, Minhoi hands it to me. But I don’t want to keep it either.
When I feel the weight of the tiny, heavy body in my arms, I can’t
stand the fact that this isn’t my son that I’m holding.

We have only a Mini Cooper, but it runs like an antelope. And since I
don’t have any filming scheduled during the next two weeks, we toss a
tent and a haversack in the backseat and take off. Normandy, Brittany,
England.
From London we race through the night all the way to Land’s
End. Portsmouth. Plymouth. This is where Chichester embarked for
Australia and Cape Horn. And Chay Blyth. Nonstop around the
globe, against all winds and currents. And this is where the sailboats
embark on the solo race across the Atlantic.
We scurry about for days on end, looking at all the sailboats and
their crews, who are making the final preparations. I feel the same
pain that a convict must feel when another inmate is released while he
himself has to stay behind. The air has the pungent smell of freedom,
234 K laus K inski

which hurts so badly but feels so good. The convict presses his face
against the bars, staring, staring, staring! Even if it’s then harder to en­
dure incarceration.
Today, as the sailboats head for the open sea, I feel as if I’m back
in the jet plane rising from the airstrip in Peru, leaving the jungle far
below. And again I have to press my fist against my mouth to keep
from screaming.
We travel on, all the way to the rugged coast, where the Atlantic
booms and surges, lashed by the icy wind. Where the tide grabs at
you, hurling the ocean back even more wildly. No human being can
be seen anywhere. Only shrubs, ripped out by the wind and dashing
like clouds over the slopes. I feel as if we had broken out of the deadly
tomb of civilization, with the remnants of torn chains on our metal
collars, on our wrists and ankles. For moments at a time I forget the
insidious traps that human society lays for anyone who has the insane
idea of crossing the boundary.
A uniformed guard eighty-sixes us from the “nature preserve.”
We have to take down our tent; you’re allowed to pitch a tent only on
camping grounds. Ghettos. We wait till it’s dark again. Then we creep
back into the bushes.
At the crack of dawn, so early that no ghetto guard can stink up
the place, we return to the cliffs and light a fire.
We have to cook for ourselves because we never manage to get
food around here. We keep arriving too late. Sometimes only five
minutes. The personnel always gives us dirty, suspicious looks as if
we had insulted the entire nation by not showing up punctually for
chow. In other words, because we haven’t eaten punctually like every­
one else. As if this rubbish weren’t disgusting enough that we can’t eat
it without getting stomach cramps. Everything is oversalted and hard
or mushy. As if it weren’t sick and arrogant enough that they don’t
serve beer between two and six in the afternoon. Just because some
 Kinski Uncut 235

drunken slut of a queen had the sadistic idea that only she can get
sloshed! And then that fish and chips!
Driving back through Brittany, I get into an argument with Min­
hoi because we’re reapproaching the ghetto. I feel as if it’s not me rag­
ing and screaming, as if I’m hearing and seeing myself raging and
screaming and spewing out horrible words and insults. Like in
dreams, or in a movie special effect, where a person splits in two.
Good separating from evil. An astral body emerges from him and sits
down next to him. That’s what I feel like. I see the horrible scope of
what’s happening, and I imagine that my body has to be shattered by
this terrible, earth-shaking rage. And that my innards have to rip
apart. That my soul has to bleed to death in this carnage. But, as I
have said, I see it all as an outsider. I feel the pain, but I feel it as some­
one else’s pain.
Minhoi wants me to stop the car. She gets out and runs across a
meadow. When I get out of the car to run after her, I feel such a hor­
rible stabbing in my heart that I shriek and roll on the ground. It’s like
someone piercing my heart nonstop. I’ve often had shooting pains
there, but they’ve never been this awful.
I don’t know how long I’ve been rolling on the ground when Min­
hoi returns to the car and hands me some flowers that she’s picked.
I’m infinitely thankful to her for her sweet love. But the knife stabs in
my heart remain.

I agree to do a photo romance in Monte Carlo. It’s very well paid, and
the poses you’re shot in are no more feeble-minded than what those
sleazy directors want. A photo romance takes three to five days. I ask
whether I can sign up immediately for fifty or a hundred.
Minhoi wants our son. Now. Today. This instant! She begs me,
weeping. I promise her. I yearn for our son as much as she does. But
236 K laus K inski

first I want to find a place; I’m like an animal that builds a protective
nest for its young.

We drop off our tents in Rome and fly to Paris, where Andrzej Zu-
lawski wants me for his movie Llm portant c’est d ’aimer (That Most
Important Thing: Love). At least a Pole for once, I think.
In Paris Minhoi is pregnant. At the crack of dawn she comes run­
ning to me in the bathroom, where I’m shaving, and she shows me a
tiny round tab that looks like a leaf under a microscope. It’s changed
color in her urine. That’s how she can tell she’s pregnant. After show­
ing me the tab, she very carefully puts it on the glass shelf over the
sink, as if it were a baby carriage holding our son.
As of that moment, my insides light up and everything around me
lights up. Everything is illuminated, everything. I see flowery mead­
ows wherever I look, even though Paris is gray and cold and nasty. All
the people I see appear cheerful and friendly. I feel as if I were just be­
ing born. Everything is new for me, and everything seems good and
uncorrupted. Nanhoi is growing in me just as he is in Minhoi’s belly.
We are constantly busy with preparations. We run around for baby
linen, inspect a lot of cribs and carriages; Minhoi sews bedclothes and
baby shirts from floral textiles in the colors of spring. I have shirts
made for me from the same material so that they’ll match my son’s.
We purchase baby bottles and diapers and everything we need, so
that our darling baby boy will feel fine and lack for nothing.
I now hate making films as I’ve never hated it before. All I want to
do is prepare for the arrival of my son, whom I love more than any­
thing else in the world. But I have no choice, I have to make movies,
because we constantly need money. Now more than ever.
The production company for which Zulawski is filming can’t sign a
contract with me because the German distributor, who’s cofinancing the
 Kinski Uncut 2 3 7

project, doesn’t want me. The reason is that the miserable maggot who’s
negotiating with the French company wants to get back at me. Years and
years ago, he had the hots for Erika when I was fucking her. But Erika
wanted to screw only with me. That’s why this maggot hated me.
Zulawski says he won’t make the movie without me. I don’t give a
shit about the film. I need bread.

I fly to Munich, where Sabine also lives. Not only is she fucking Herr
von S., who heads the distributor’s Munich branch, but she’s also
fucking the American millionaire who owns the whole kit and caboo­
dle, especially in the United States. So I call her up and we make a
date. When she opens the door, she’s wearing her dressing gown,
which is made in such a way that I’d rather fuck right through it stand­
ing up. With one leg on a chair. Between her tits. In her mouth. From
behind her, up her ass. She’s a fabulous slut. That mouth must have
slurped a lot of dick in its time. Her eyes are fuck-feverish, set deep in
their sockets. She’s very, very seductive, very sweet, and very, very
cunning. She starts right off by asking me not to tell her guy in Amer­
ica (who, incidentally, is married and has furnished her entire kitschy
apartment) anything about Herr von S., who is likewise married and
will be showing up in a couple of minutes. At the same time this serves
as an excuse: Unfortunately, I can’t poke her today. Which means:
there’s always tomorrow. But at least I can personally tell Herr von S.
the whole scandalous skinny.
Just as I’m nibbling on some of the candy that she’s offered me,
the doorbell rings and Herr von S. is here. I tell him my story, adding
that the shithead who refuses to let me appear in the movie is merely
Herr von S.’s employee but has gone over his head in making such
crucial decisions. Herr von S. hits the ceiling. He promises me on a
stack of Bibles (with Sabine as my witness) that he’ll take care of the
238 Klaus Kinski

whole matter first thing in the morning. I split, after telling Sabine at
the apartment door that Zulawski will give her a role in the flick if she
makes sure that it all works out right. So everything’s okay.
Meanwhile I’ve been offered another flick in Paris, N uit d ’Or
(“Golden Night”). So I’ll make this dilettantish junk immediately.
Then the Zulawski film.

Now everyone wants to play Kean, the greatest British actor of the
nineteenth century. Jean-Paul Sartre has done a stage adaptation of
Alexandre Dumas’s novel. It’s to be mounted at the Théâtre de la
Ville. But I can’t come to terms about my wages with that fussy queer
of a director! What odd conceptions of salaries they have here! Finally
he agrees to a figure. He bitches that it’s twice what Ingrid Bergman
got, and she was paid top dollar.
None of that interests me. All I’m interested in is getting more
money. That’s all! I finally sign the lousy contract.
At our first meeting Sartre is very nice, delighted that I’ll be play­
ing Kean. He chows down and guzzles and smokes like a chimney. No
wonder he’s sick, and almost blind despite his thick, polished glasses.
I’ve skimmed his adaptation and I don’t bother cudgeling my brain
about the pseudo-socialist bullshit in this outrageously awful play.
We’ve got a whole year to go until the premiere.
I still haven’t recovered from Zulawski’s intellectual jerking off
when I dig out Kean, for I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t be
able to rescue Sartre’s clunker. While reading, I cross out almost
every page and try to splice in more and more soliloquies from the
Shakespeare plays that Kean performed in. Like cuts in a film—
flashes, flashbacks, closeups. But it’s no panacea. By the time I’m
done, there’s almost nothing but soliloquies: Hamlet, Romeo,
Richard III, Othello, Macbeth, Mark Antony, King Lear. I go to the
 Kinski Uncut 2 3 9

fidgety director and tell him to give Sartre my corrections. Maybe he

can rewrite the whole crap. Sartre’s advisers reply that he refuses to let
anyone alter even one comma in his text. Has Sartre forgotten that he
plagiarized it all from Dumas’s novel? And plagiarized badly at that!
He’s botched it!
After the publication of my first book, I was compared to Céline
and I was asked whether I’d like to play him in a movie. That was the
first time I’d heard his name, and I still haven’t read a word of his writ­
ings. Meanwhile I’ve learned what he said about Sartre: “That runty,
nearsighted shit worm, that Sartre—where was he when the blood
flowed? Crawling around in the innards of the damned like the tiny
ball of shit that he is! That tiny, phony pinworm, that worm from
other people’s shit!”

We find a studio apartment in the Marais, the Jewish section of Paris.

The studio is a single, huge, high, bright room with windows all
around. There’s a balcony and an open kitchen. And the bathtub’s in
the middle of the living room, right in front of the fireplace. A stairway
leads to an open bedroom loft, from where you can step out to a large
terrace. You can’t hear any traffic from the street. On one side the
windows of the gigantic living room face the courtyard of a school.
Whenever it’s recess, we hear the cheerful and relaxed laughing and
screaming of the children, who storm out of the stuffy building and
play ball in the courtyard or just frolic about.

Minhoi’s belly grows bigger, and she becomes more and more beauti­
ful. Every moment that Nanhoi grows in her is a festival. And some­
times Minhoi takes my hand and puts it on her belly so that I can feel
Nanhoi moving. I can also see him kicking in her womb. And when I
240 K laus K inski

place my ear on her belly I can hear his heart beating. I have no words
for how much I love Minhoi.
Minho'i and Nanhoi are one. And Nanhoi and I are one. And I am
growing in Nanhoi. I will be born through Nanhoi. And Nanhoi will
be born through me and Minhoi.
The closer Minhoi gets to the birth, the more I feel the grace of
life, the more I sense that I’m part of the universe.
An American woman in Chicago once asked me why half of every
French flick is devoted to eating. I can’t answer her question. She’s
right: eating and talking about eating. They film every chowdown,
starting with breakfast. Dinner is the hardest meal to endure. In
bistros, restaurants, and especially in private homes, when friends or
several married couples are invited. It’s unbearable. Then the dia­
logue! Which is especially written by dialogue writers (yes, yes,
there’s such a thing as a dialogue writer). For example, the eaters pass
the sauce boat or the salt shaker after saying, “Please pass the sauce,”
or “Please pass the salt.” Then they say “Thank you” and “You’re
welcome” and “Thank you” again, and so on and on, even though all
they have to do is get off their asses and reach for the stuff. (Naturally
all this is because the so-called dialogue writers can’t hit on anything
to write about except eating.) And every other kind of chowing down
is filmed as well. Chowing, chowing. So long as it has something to do
with chowing and guzzling. As though the characters hadn’t chowed
or guzzled for a long time and there were nothing more important in
the world than chowing and guzzling.
N uit d’Or is an exception: there’s no eating or drinking. This
movie has an addiction that’s a lot worse than food and booze, and it’s
spreading faster and faster across the entire planet like an epidemic:
the addiction to the sick and the macabre, the addiction to rot and de­
cay, which those garbage-picking movie directors pilfer from the
refuse dumps of human brains. Yes, they’re also kleptomaniacs. They
 Kinski Uncut 2 4 1

simply rip off stuff from the trash cans of other movies—as many as
possible. Real garbagemen. It’s disgusting.
December 23, Minhoi’s birthday. I have to shoot until six P.M.;

then I dash over to Cartier, where I’ve picked out a diamond for her.
When I bring Minhoi the diamond, she’s not delighted. She does
smile gratefully, but I know the diamond means nothing to her. Once
again I’ve done the wrong thing. I know that the diamond can’t make
up for what I’ve done to her—but what in God’s name have I done to
her? What worse thing can you do to a person than not love them?
But I love Minhoi so much that I would sacrifice my life for her at any
time. My only crime is being condemned to carry on this eternal fight
with myself. And my fight, the deadly struggle between the opposite
forces in me, keeps getting crueler and cruder.
Minhoi has done everything she can out of love for me. She sim­
ply can’t stand me anymore. The decision isn’t hers. It’s beyond her. I
know it, and yet it won’t sink in—or rather, I refuse to understand that
I am incapable of making her happy. But I cannot and will not drag
around this shitty guilt feeling like a disgusting cross that makes me
rage if I refuse to lose my mind altogether. What have I done?

Minhoi threatens me more and more often, saying I’ll lose her com­
pletely if I don’t change. But in what way should I change? Should I
violate myself even more and totally cripple my nature?
Can you learn how to become different? I don’t mean behave dif­
ferently—that’s no great feat. I mean: Can you become an entirely dif­
ferent person? How is it possible to change your very soul without
damaging yourself? And what would become of your thoughts and
feelings? I’ve racked my brain millions of times, wondering why I’m
not different and how I could manage to become different. All in vain.
I believe that you can’t determine your character, I believe that a
242 Klaus K inski

person’s character depends on how strong the magnetism of the uni­

verse is and which forces shine upon you. And I believe that no one
can influence magnetism or vibrations. Especially when such antithet­
ical forces collide. Can you calm the ocean off Cape Horn? If anyone
knows better, then say so now!

To someone who’s hard of hearing, these words may sound apolo­

getic. But I apologize for nothing that I have done—and who should I
apologize to anyway? Who would my apology help? No. I’m desper­
ately looking for a solution. I’ve tried everything, too. Nobody helps
me. I count the days, the hours, the minutes until the birth of my son,
like a convict carving the days, the hours, minutes, and seconds into
the walls of his cell. My son will be my redeemer. His love will liberate
me from the chains of torment. I know it, I feel it. I can’t show it, can’t
prove it. But I’m filled with the vision of his birth, and it gives me
strength even now. Just as a fettered but growing tree smashes the iron
rings that threaten to grow into its bark and flesh, as they do into my
soul, my son is my strength, pushing to the outside from my inner­
most depths.

Aguirre finally reaches Paris in a hair-raising English dubbing—after

five years! Herzog, talentless as a director, talentless as a producer, pa­
thetic at marketing the flick, has sold it off to some French storefront
distributor for a pittance. The even worse German soundtrack, with
subtitles, doesn’t have my voice because for years I refused to talk to
Herzog. I’m allergic to so much as hearing his name or seeing it writ­
ten. The so-called “press kit” consists of nothing but swaggering puff
pieces and brazenly wretched lies about Herzog. The responsible
party is a slimy faggot of a “press attaché,” who’s resolved to devote
 Kinski Uncut 2 43

the rest of his life to kissing Herzog’s disgusting ass. The press kit also
introduces Herzog’s illiterate claim that he forced me in front of the
camera at gunpoint.
Gazettes, radio, and TV jerk off their pukey articles about me.
They get themselves turned on calling me a genius. They don’t know
that the film, as it is, exists only because I ordered Herzog to keep his
trap shut in order to salvage anything that could be salvaged. At least
in hundreds of interviews I finally have a chance to spit at Herzog and
call him what he is: a miserable asshole! Nonetheless he insolently
grabs up all the conceivable prizes and awards that a feebleminded
“kulchur” can produce.

UImportant c’est d’aimer premieres simultaneously in Paris. Here,

too, the newspapers and the TV anchormen blabber all sorts of vapid
and narrowminded junk about the alleged collaboration between me
and Zulawski. The truth is that I put up with this arrogant, recalci­
trant, and complacent director—without punching his stupid face—
only because that maggot of a distributor in Munich tried to prevent
me from filming this rotten and depressing crap.
The totally stupid and draining interviews, which run as long as
ten hours or even several days, are all the more grotesque because
most of these castrati understand absolutely nothing and they twist
and distort it all so that nothing I say makes any sense.
I’ve now let the word out that I’ll be interviewed only by female
journalists. Not that they’re smarter or more talented, but at least I can
nurture some hope of getting a good fuck. If a newspaper, a radio sta­
tion, or a TV network calls up my agency, I have them find out
whether the woman’s pretty and how old she is. If she claims she’s
pretty, then for safety’s sake I agree to meet her at the agency. I can
always split. One of them writes in her article that I didn’t answer a
244 Klaus Kinski

single question, I just kept trying to reach into her crotch and drag her
off to my hotel.
None of these cretins will believe that I’ve turned down Ken Rus­
sell, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Liliana
Cavani, Arthur Penn, Claude Lelouch, and all the other so-called
world-famous directors and that I do flicks only to make money. It’s
really strenuous constantly rejecting the old fast-food rubbish that
they keep trying to cram down my throat.

Minhoi takes my hand more and more often and puts it on her belly so
that I can feel Nanhoi kicking. His kicks are really hard, and they get
stronger and stronger, thrusting out like kung fu kicks. When I man­
age to make out a tiny foot before it kicks, because I absolutely have to
kiss it, and when I quickly try to press my lips to it—it kicks me in the
mouth. I’m sure he knows this and is laughing in the womb. From
now on, whenever I place my hand on an area where I think there’s a
little foot, he kicks.
Everywhere in the parks Minhoi talks to mothers with babies,
asking them where they bought their baby carriage or where she
can find this or that. I’d love Nanhoi to have a huge English pram,
the kind I got for Nastassja. Then he’ll think he’s riding a coach. He
can drive me along, shouting “Giddyap!” and whipping me. Then
I’ll be his pony, pulling him along to wherever he wants to go, walk­
ing, trotting, or galloping. But Minhoi doesn’t want a big pram be­
cause it won’t fit into a car if we want to drive our boy to the park or
the country. We also ask the mothers about cribs, playpens, and
baskets, and where you can find a nursery table, and a bureau
for baby things in Nanhoi’s nursery. Eventually we get to know all
the baby stores with the largest selections of cribs, playpens, and
baby carriages. And we also track down the shops offering the cutest
 Kinski Uncut 2 45

little shoes and outfits, and I know where to find all the toys that I
want to buy for Nanhoi.
During these reconnoitering and shopping trips, we always start
arguing. We get jealous whenever one of us picks out something for
Nanhoi. I try hard as I can to keep my mouth shut so as not to get
Minhoi agitated, but I’m so overflowing with exuberance about mak­
ing everything as beautiful as possible for my son that, unable to con­
trol myself, I keep spontaneously exclaiming, crying out, shouting
whatever I think, wish, yearn for. In short, Minhoi and I are com­
pletely intoxicated with our baby boy.
All we talk about is Nanhoi’s birth, and all we do is prepare for it.
The suspense is unbearable. I feel as if my own body were about to
give birth to Nanhoi. As if I’d be bearing our child together with Min­
hoi. The three of us are a single body: Minhoi, Nanhoi, and I.
Five P.M. Minhoi’s contractions are suddenly so powerful that I
drive her to the hospital at once. She’s taken to the delivery room
promptly. But the moment hasn’t come yet. All evening long, until
deep into the night, the contractions keep increasing and decreasing,
increasing and decreasing. I never leave Minhoi’s side, and I keep
kissing and caressing her and my son in her womb. More and more
distinctly I feel my innermost core shaken by a force of nature—the
imminent birth that announces itself like an earthquake. But Minhoi
and I are not afraid. All I can feel and see is my son, who is coming
toward me from far away. My sensations are too vast, too overwhelm­
ing to be put into words. I’ve loaded a Polaroid camera to photo­
graph the birth. Minhoi wants me to. I think it must be the most
wonderful thing imaginable to keep looking at those pictures. What
mother wouldn’t be happy to see herself giving birth to her child?
Four A.M. The birth is beginning. Minhoi iies on her back, her
legs wide apart, the backs of her knees in metal stirrups, and she holds
tight to the bars as she slightly pushes her abdomen up. Her entire
246 Klaus Kinski

body seems to be opening; she is all birth. I’ll have to shoot the photos
in a wild hurry so as not to miss a single phase of birth.
I’d like to kneel down. It’s the most poignant, most powerful,
most dramatic, most joyous, most sensual, and most sacred experi­
ence I’ve ever had. Minhoi must be in pain, but she doesn’t seem to
notice—for she’s laughing! These are the pains of a storm, a roiling
sea. . . . The first thing to emerge is the top of Nanhoi’s skull. . . .
A membrane connected to a stethoscope is placed by the midwife
on that tiny head. Then she hands Minhoi' and me the stethoscope
so that we can hear Nanhoi’s heartbeat. And while I listen to the
sweetest heartbeat in the world as it pours through me, uniting with
my own heartbeat, becoming a cry of sheer joy, Nanhoi’s little head
comes to light—his face upward, toward heaven. . . . Minhoi gasps
and moans, but her breathing is deep and regular as she squeezes
Nanhoi out of her belly. . . . The next thing to appear is Nanhoi’s
little right arm . . . then his little left arm, and both arms dangle, ex­
hausted from the strain of being born. Now the birth has to proceed
quickly. Any delay might cut off Nanhoi’s air because his tender
chest, which is still inside Minhoi, has no room to breathe in. With
a tremendous exertion of energy, Minhoi opens her entire body
like a flower. . . . Now she no longer seems to be straining . . . and
just as the ocean detaches a part of the mainland to make an
island, Nanhoi’s body slides out of Minhoi’s. When the mid­
wife holds Nanhoi out to her, the first thing Minhoi kisses are
his little feet. The doctor wants to take Nanhoi next door to wash
him, but I wouldn’t leave my son alone, not for anything in the
world, so I accompany him every step of the way. With a jet of
water the doctor washes the rest of the blood off the baby’s head,
face, and body, and while he holds him upside down by his feet,
Nanhoi lets out his first scream, and I kiss his divinely adorable and
wrinkled face.
 Kinski Uncut 247

Since Nanhoi’s birth everything seems liberated—everything is im­

mense and boundless and one with the universe, as if there are no
more barriers, no laws, no religions, no passing of time, and no death.
Nothing but love. What do all my pains and sufferings signify next to
the light spread by Nanho’i’s birth, which illuminates me and gives me
unspeakable strength and makes my future radiant, no matter how dif­
ficult and arduous it may be?
Anything I have to do during these days I take care of quickly and
effortlessly so that I can immediately return to the hospital. In Min-
hoi’s room, Nanho’i lies kicking in a transparent crib. It’s by his
mommy’s bed so she can watch him without having to sit up. I can’t
wait to see Nanho’i again! Bend down to his little bed, take him in my
arms, kiss him, lick him, gobble him up. Kiss his gigantic, heavenly lit­
tle eyes, which are dark stars like Minhoi’s eyes. Kiss his budlike
mouth. His teensy feet and strong, teensy hands, which clench into
square fists like mine, but are just so tiny.
Minhoi sends me out to buy more baby shirts, baby jackets, rub­
ber panties, diapers, skin cream, baby oil and powder, rompers, and
anything else she wants. Sometimes I’m so excited that I get the
wrong thing: then I have to go back and exchange it. I ask Minhoi
whether I should buy a folding stroller. She says, “No. Not for an­
other six or eight months. Nanho’i shouldn’t be sitting yet! Don’t make
him sit! Babies aren’t allowed to sit because of their soft spines!”
Finally the festive day comes when I take Minhoi’and Nanho’i home.
At night we spell one another to bottle-feed Nanho'i. I set the
alarm clock every three hours to make sure I don’t oversleep in case
my eyes close in exhaustion. But my little darling cries at exactly the
right time. I’m so happy to be holding my baby boy in my arm and
feeding him. Feeling his small, robust body getting heavier with every
248 Klaus K inski

drop as he leans his little head on my shoulder so that he can burp,

squeezing out the air he sucked in while drinking. Then he falls asleep
again on my shoulder, and I don’t stir and I don’t dare breathe—I
don’t want to disturb his baby sleep.
For now, I do all the shopping in stores and at the market because
Minhoi* is still very weak, and the five-story climb to our apartment is
too strenuous. But she is so delirious with happiness and so proud of
our son that she soon goes shopping herself, showing Nanhoi' off
everywhere. This always takes a long time for the Jewish mamas in the
Marais can’t get enough of him.
Now we take Nanhoi out in his carriage. But wheeling him through
the streets is a living hell. You don’t know where to turn. The streets are
filled with exhaust fumes, gutters, bestial stinks and infernal din, and
above all: danger! Plus, dog shit wherever you go. It’s like playing hop­
scotch: if you want to avoid stepping on a turd, you have to hop from
one of the few nonshitty spots to another of the few nonshitty spots.
Never have I been so anxious to get out of Paris as fast as possible.

When Nanhoi is asleep, I check on him every moment to make sure

he’s lying correctly. To make sure he’s covered properly, getting
enough air, not sleeping in a draft. To make sure the room or the ter­
race isn’t too warm. Or too cold. To make sure no mosquito, no
wasp, no bee, no fly has wandered in despite the net. The baby fra­
grance he emanates in sleep is so intoxicating that I’d love to climb
right into his crib. But it would probably collapse. I also make sure
he’s not tossing and turning because of a nightmare. Sometimes he
laughs aloud in a dream. Sometimes, when I come up close, he
reaches for my finger in his sleep. He has to use his entire little hand
to clutch my finger tight. I’d like to let him have my finger forever.
But if I have to leave, or if Minhoi is getting impatient because she
 Kinski Uncut 249

wants to be alone with Nanhoi, I withdraw my finger very, very care­

fully from his little fist.

Minhoi wants me to move out of our apartment. She herself wants to

rent an apartment on the lie Saint-Louis. At first I don’t understand
what she means. It’s true that years ago she was already talking about
our splitting up after Nanhoi’s birth. But I never realized how serious
she was, and I’ve been so happy that I’ve forgotten what she said.
She wants me to move out and find my own place, separate from her
and Nanhoi*. That is, I would no longer be seeing Nanhoi all the time,
twenty-four hours a day. I wouldn’t be playing with him and making
faces for him, which he loves. I wouldn’t be getting up in the middle
of the night to make sure he’s covered. I wouldn’t be giving him his
bottle or washing his diapers or dressing him in fresh little shirts, lit­
tle jackets, little panties. I wouldn’t be washing his baby things any­
more. I wouldn’t be kissing him day and night and carrying him in
my arms and wheeling him through the park and watching the pup­
pet show and putting him on the merry-go-round and standing next
to him as we whirl around because he’s too little and can’t hold
on. . . .
It won’t sink in. My mind’s a blank. Minhoi says that this was our
agreement. She says I promised to leave her alone with our son after
his birth. She says that I’ve known for a long time that we can’t live to­
gether. That no one can live with me. I’m paralyzed. Maybe this is all a
bad dream? Maybe I’m imagining it because I’m so exhausted. Maybe
Minhoi will regret it once I’m gone and she wants me back. How can
she think that I’ll abandon my son? Never, I’ll never do that! My son
needs me! And I can’t live without him! Maybe I can patch things up
with Minhoi. She can’t just push me away from Nanhoi, that would be
too horrible. Maybe everything will work out, maybe . . .
250 Klaus K inski

The thought oflooking for my own apartment, away from Minhoí

and away from my baby boy, whom I love more than anything in the
world, is so fatally sad that I feel dead inside. Dead like a chopped-off
branch. I’d have to be pushed, brutally shoved to look at an apart­
ment. But then I’d only stare into space. I just can’t manage to work
up any interest.
I rent some pad or other that’s advertised in Le Figaro. The build­
ing is 33 Avenue Foch, the most expensive street in Paris. It’s an
apartment house, heartless and in ghastly taste. A morgue. It was built
by a Rothschild, and I’m subletting the apartment from the shah of
Iran. The lease for the one-room pad with a kitchenette and a win­
dowless bathroom is personally signed by the shah himself and comes
straight from his palace in Tehran.
This guy is a regular landlord. His shitrag of a contract has all kinds
of no-nos about small kids and flowers on the balcony! He’s probably
grabbed up a huge number of such holes, which he calls “luxury
studios.” Maybe he’s even a pawnbroker—who knows? The concierge
at 33 Avenue Foch is haughty and arrogant because, as he tells me, the
building’s underground garage contains the most Rolls-Royces and
Bentleys in the whole of Paris—not to mention an Excalibur, plus
Maseratis and Ferraris.
I let Minhoi keep our Mini Cooper. I usually walk everywhere—
if possible, only at twilight or at night. I can’t stand people gaping at
me and discovering the lethal torment in my face, which kills and
kills and kills and kills. I can’t hide it from anyone. I can’t stifle the
shriek that rages in my face. Everything in me shrieks, shrieks,
shrieks! I’m scared of being seen by people. I take the most ridicu­
lous detours because I’m scared of running into them. It would be
downright indecent for others to find out what I have to suffer. I feel
like a leper in the Middle Ages, or like the Elephant Man, who covers
himself so that people won’t be disgusted. Sometimes I burst into
 Kinski Uncut 25 1

loud sobs in the middle of the street. I walk faster, I run. I act as if I’m
in a hurry, as if I have absolutely no time. I’m completely incapable of
doing anything—I can’t even eat, and I can’t even think of sleeping.
All I can think about is my beloved boy, my only beloved, my Nan-
hoi, whom I can have only every one or two weeks and then for only
twenty-hours at most. Worst of all, I never know when. I call Minhoi
up daily and ask her whether I can see my son. I plead with her, I beg
her. Sometimes she simply says that I can’t see him. Or she just
hangs up.
If I run past a hooker on Avenue Foch, I smile and glance at my
watch as if saying, “Maybe some other time. But now I’m running late,
I haven’t got a free moment.” That’s a lie, of course, for I have nothing
to do.
Today Minhoi comes and shows me stores where I can buy
food, since there are no stores on Avenue Foch. She explains what
I have to buy. When she brings Nanho’i to me for a day or for a day
and a night, I wait on the concrete balcony facing Avenue Foch. I
station myself there hours in advance, trying to see whether every
distant Mini Cooper is hers. I keep staring at it in case it’s the right
one, even though she never comes early. In fact, she’s usually late.
And if she’s even one minute late, and if I don’t see her Mini
Cooper from far away, then I bang my head against the walls and
fall to my knees and tearfully beg Nanhoi* to come to me. For when­
ever Minhoi promises to bring me my baby boy, even if it’s a week
ahead of time, I live exclusively for the moment when I can see my
darling, hold his solid little body in my arms, sniff at him, inhale his
roselike fragrance, and squeeze him so tight that he gasps for air. I
feel each time as if I’ve been risen from the dead. Before Nanhol’s
arrival I’m nothing but a bruised, trodden clump of soul. T hat’s
how it always goes.
If the telephone doesn’t ring for days on end, I jump. If it rings, I
252 K laus K inski

likewise jump. For hours, days, nights, I pace up and down this lux­
ury cell. I shove my fists into my ears until they hurt, to keep from
hearing the infernal traffic din on Avenue Foch. The murderous pan­
demonium of the traffic doesn’t stop even at night. So I lie awake,
stuffing my fists into my ears.

When my Nanhoi is with me, we stay inside only if it’s raining heavily.
I even feed him in the park. We head down Avenue Foch to the Bois
de Boulogne, and I push his carriage double-time, which Nanhoi re­
ally loves. In the park I can toss him a lot higher than in the room.
Higher, ever higher, I toss him aloft, ten times, twenty times, fifty
times, a hundred times. Nanhoi never gets enough. I also have to play
“pilot” with him, holding him on one arm and whirling around on
one leg . . . faster and faster, faster and faster . . . until I get dizzy, and
the earth is spinning around us. We go over to the ducks swimming
on the pond and we feed them bread. He turns his little head in all di­
rections, discovering and seeing everything.
The most sensational things for my baby boy are the merry-go-
rounds. He often rides for hours, until he’s so exhausted that he
falls asleep, and I have to lift him off the carousel. I very carefully
push him home in his little carriage and then put my sleeping boy
to bed. After the merry-go-round comes the swing. Then licking
ice cream. The most fun of all is a whole day of ice cream, swings,
and merry-go-round. But the supreme pleasure for him is licking
ice cream. His tiny hands can barely hold the cone, and I’m wor­
ried that the scoop of ice cream, which is almost the size of his little
head, may tumble off the cone at any moment. Then the ice cream
starts to melt before his tiny tongue can lick it up. It’s exciting to sit
and try to keep his movements and the condition of the ice cream
under control.
 Kinski Uncut 253

It’s an insult that I have to do the movie Madame Claude, and here in
Paris to boot. The salary is also wretched. But we need money. The
girls who play Madame Claude’s prostitutes in the movie fuck like
professionals. Especially the very young ones, but also the married
ones, whom I can fuck only if their husbands are briefly out of town. A
very young extra has a tiny, almost naked cunt, like a mouth, very tiny
ass cheeks, and very tiny tits. I always have to telephone her horny
mom before I can fuck the daughter.

They call those idiotic and mind-numbing TV programs “talk

shows.” They’re nothing but force-feeding for the public. Now and
then someone pukes the garbage back into a pig’s face—and that
someone is me. I’m sure people will ask why I even bothered going.
The first time I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I went for
the same reason that I always go to such garbage dumps—because
some jerk of a publisher or producer keeps nagging me until I finally
let myself be trucked over in exchange for something I want from him.
The French moron who, to crown it all, calls himself a talk master
(master!) was, I believe, named Philippe Bouvard. That mangy worm
squeezing its way out of a stiffly startched collar is the most nauseating
thing I’ve ever met on such an occasion. I sit in that whorehouse of a
TV studio and have to wait until midnight, when it’s finally my turn.
In my presence, this dog-shit worm asks a young woman who’s partic­
ipating in the same program: What was the name of the first john she
went to a hotel with as a prostitute?
The young woman is very embarrassed and bewildered and can’t
answer. She’s written a best-seller called Denial This is the dramatic
and exciting story of a whore—the young woman herself—who
254 K laus K inski

managed to escape the torture of pimps and brothels. Her book de­
scribes Rue Saint-Denis, the most infamous red-light street in Paris,
where hundreds upon hundreds of very young hookers stand in the
doorways of brothels, often with no panties, and with (or without)
skirts so short that the men can see their asses and twats. The young
author—her name is the Claudette—was forced by her pimps to fuck
as many as seventy johns a night. I don’t give a shit how many men she
fucked. For me she’s a woman. No one has the right to sling crap at
her just because men treated her like crap!
Claudette blushes at the talk show host’s nasty question. In a
whisper I tell her to ignore anything this sewer jellyfish asks, and we
make a date for the next day.

I want to film Denial and I ask Claudette if she’d give me the rights.
Not only does she agree, but she stipulates that her book can be filmed
only if I make the film. . . . She kisses me the way a loving woman
kisses her man—long and passionately. She bites my lips, licks my
ears, sucks my nipples. Licks my hands, sucks my fingers and
my cock. She’s desperate for a fuck. She digs her fiery fingers into my
flesh, trembling and moaning, and her moan intensifies into a long
shriek. She doesn’t spare herself. There’s nothing whorish about her.
She devotes herself completely, spends herself, gives herself up. Ex­
actly like a woman in love. She perspires. Her belly swells. So do her
arteries. The tiny blue veins in her temples. Her abdomen works
greedily. She returns my brutal thrusts more and more wildly. . . .
Then she’s completely exhausted, with deep, dark rings under her
eyes. But soon she wants it again and again. . . . I sleep with her.
She’sjust furnishing a small, modest apartment in the Seventh Ar­
rondissement. She shows me the two small, still-uncompleted rooms.
She’s doing a lot of the painting herself. She’s already got a little furni­
 Kinski Uncut 255

ture. We fuck and sleep on a mattress on the parquet floor; the bed­
stead is still leaning against the wall. A table, a chair, a floor lamp, and
some other necessary basics. The kitchen is only half equipped, but
still she cooks for me, and she’s shopped for us.
I fuck her again. On my knees from behind. On my back. She
rides me. And again on her back, her legs wide apart and high up. She
wants me to move in. But she knows it’s impossible.
She keeps wanting to kiss me and she keeps wanting me to give
her my seed.

Entebbe (Operational Thunderbolt). Menahem Golan rings me up

from Israel and tries to talk me into making the flick. The money is so
insulting that I ought to punch him in the mouth. Furthermore, I
haven’t the foggiest idea what he’s talking about. Anyone I tell that I’m
going to be doing Entebbe instantly knows what it is. I’m the only one
who’s out of it because I never read the papers, listen to the radio, or
watch the news on TV—I switch it off as soon as the news comes on.
But when I hear the story, I’m so enthusiastic that I agree to the outra­
geous pittance that Golan offers me.
But first I have to finish shooting Madame Claude.
I meet with the producer Raymond Danon to discuss the filming
of Denial I want Maria Schneider to play the lead. She has an un­
canny resemblance to Claudette. Maria visits me on Avenue Foch.
There’s no trace of drugs. Only her tiring blabber that the prostitute
in Camille was actually fourteen years old and had syphilis. She says
she got it from Zeffirelli. He wanted to do a movie with her. You can
imagine the faggoty shit that would have come of it. In any case, Maria
seems okay, aside from some facial pimples. But Danon doesn’t trust
the project because Maria has a reputation as an addict. He’ll guaran­
tee the financing of the movie if I can guarantee that Maria won’t fall
256 Klaus K inski

on her face during the shooting as she did with Antonioni, or behave
the way she did with Bunuel. I tell him that I guarantee it.
Until tonight. For tonight she’s high again, babbling like a moron.
No one wants to risk it, and so I don’t make Denial.
I’ve talked Minho'i into coming along to Israel. I’m oveijoyed and
I ring up Menahem Golan in Tel Aviv, asking him to reserve a four-
room suite at the Hilton, with a crib and two bathrooms. Minhoi
wants to bring along a girlfriend to baby-sit.
I think about the gorgeous young Jewish girls I fucked the first
time I was in Israel. About the smell of musk in the bazaars of Haifa
and Jerusalem. And about a certain young mother: I had to climb
through her window every night and then back out at dawn so our
fucking wouldn’t be discovered by the neighbors, and especially her
husband. . . . The wife of the New York diamond dealer at the Tel
Aviv Hilton: I fucked her for such a long time in her taffeta gown that
she missed her flight to New York, and her husband divorced her. . . .
The makeup woman, the costume mistress, the dresser . . . and I
think about racing to all the others in one and the same night.
First I fly alone to Tel Aviv for the costume tryouts. This time,
right after my arrival, I screw Sabine in her hotel room, crouching be­
hind her as I shoot into her. She’s still clutching her makeup case. . . .
Next, the Arab girl with the husky voice; she sings like a guy, and her
hole is so tight I feel as if my dick were wedged in a vise. . . . The wait­
resses at the Hilton restaurant; the cooks; none of whom must know
about the others. . . . Then I fly back to Paris. Shooting is to start in
four weeks.
Sometimes Minhoi lets me spend the night in her apartment on
lie Saint-Louis. Then I kneel by Nanhoi’s crib in the nursery and let him
clutch my forefinger or my thumb until he drifts off. When he wakes up
at night, I carry him around the room and sing lullabies until I believe
that he’s sunk into a deep sleep and I can lay him down very
 Kinski Uncut 25 7

gently in his crib. Occasionally, when I’m about to tiptoe out of his
room, he wakes up again, crying, because he no longer feels my pres­
ence. Then I kneel down again by his crib and let him grab my index fin­
ger or my entire hand, and I stroke his sweet little head until he drops off
again. Or else I again carry him around the room until he calms down,
and I sing Brahms’ lullaby or some other, until he starts dreaming.
I’m so happy with Nanhoi that I always forget how unhappy I am
without him. As soon as Minhoi is nice to me or serves me some food,
which I regard as love, I feel as if nothing had happened earlier.
Sometimes she asks me to leave, and I’m always scared to death, and
we end up arguing. But I’m so completely dependent on Nanhoi that
I’m ready to put up with any kind of abuse or humiliation so long as I
can be near him. And near Minhoi.
The shooting in Tel Aviv is sheer torture. Plus the swill we have
to eat! We shoot fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty hours at a stretch.
Sometimes in the cockpit of a plane with no air-conditioning and no
hot coffee until four A.M. We don’t even have a moment to piss.
I spend most of my time on location. In the evening, if it’s not too
late, I buy Minhoi flowers or try to surprise her with something.
I don’t give up trying to reunite our little family. Minhoi is bored
in Tel Aviv and she’s dying to get to the Red Sea, where Golan owns a
hotel. I’ve got three days off, but I can’t join her. I have to fly to Paris
to complete Madame Claude.

Boulevard Saint-Germain, eleven A.M. A girl with glasses blocks my

way and asks if she may touch me. I say, “Come over here with your
beak and try.” She forces her tongue, which is as big and hard as a
dick, into my mouth. With our arms around each other, we head to­
ward a fuck hotel.
As we enter the windowless room, I kick the door shut and push
258 K laus K inski

the girl, as is, up against the door panel. I don’t even take off her
glasses; I reach under her dress and rip up her soaked panties. She
shrieks, pulls her legs apart, opens her ass cheeks, and bends her
knees slightly without resisting. My cock has gone haywire, and it
takes four hands to shove it into her. The glasses have flown off her
face and she looks blind. I don’t know whether she can see me with­
out glasses. She merely smiles and feels up my face.

I can’t remember the name of the chick with the blond curls, but I
meet her on Boulevard Saint-Michel, right by the corner of Saint-
Germain, where the girl with the glasses spoke to me. This one has a
moronically huge guitar under her arm and she yells, “Kinski!” which
sounds like “Fuck me.” I don’t know her, but I kiss her on the mouth.
She says she has no time now because she’s supposedly going to a
guitar lesson—though I’m convinced that she can’t play the guitar and
will never learn how. But she absolutely wants to get together with
me. Midnight. She doesn’t want me calling her. Midnight, and that’s
that. She gives me the street and the house number and tells me to
wait in front of the building. Twelve midnight on the dot. Then she
lugs her moronically huge guitar over to a cab, where she turns
around and her fingers signal the number 12 in the air. Five fingers.
Another five. Then thumb and index.
She’ll probably be sneaking out of the bed she shares with her
guy—her boyfriend, her husband, or whoever. I wouldn’t care if she
had ten husbands. All that interests me is that I absolutely have to fuck
that blond hole.
I’ve been standing outside her house, 5 Rue de 1’Université, since
eleven P.M., banging my half-frozen feet against one another. I think
about how hot her body is now and maybe she’s being poked by a
dick that’s just shooting now. I’m fed up with freezing my ass off and
 Kinski Uncut 259

I’m not gonna do it for another hour. I walk to the next building and
back, in both directions, so I keep turning around on the off chance
that she’ll come down earlier and not recognize me from behind in the
darkness. I don’t cross the street because her guy may be at the win­
dow and get suspicious.
Midnight has already struck, and I hate the sweet blond slut for
not showing up. I’m frozen stiff, and my cock is rigid. Just as I’m
about to dash off and look for a taxi I hear the heavy entrance door
creak, and an almost unrecognizable shadow comes flitting out. This
time with no guitar, thank God. She’s recognized me instantly. Slip­
ping her arm through mine, she leads me down the street, then along a
narrow alley to Boulevard Saint-Germain. After crossing it, we head
into Rue Monsieur le-Prince, take the second left, then right, then left
again. I believe it’s the Rue des Quatre-Vents or something similar,
but I’m not sure. I’m too numbed by the aroma of the blond slut, who
smells as strongly of fucking as if she’d come to me directly from an­
other guy’s bed. She seems to be a steady customer at the fuck hotel.
The chummy female night pimp hands her a key as if it were the same
room each time. I don’t have to pay.
After she bolts the door on the inside, I go to the toilet in order to
empty my bladder completely before fucking. She follows me, asking
if she can hold my dick. I say yes. She takes it in her bowllike open
hand as if weighing it on a scale, cautiously half-closing her fingers as
if measuring the caliber that she’ll soon be feeling deep in her pussy.
But experienced as she is, she leaves enough room for my cock to
grow in her hand. And, as expected, it promptly gets thicker and
heavier at the touch of her fingers. She hastily gives it back, as if scared
that it may get too thick and heavy for her little hand, and probably
because she can’t stand not having it in her hole. She hurries back into
the room and gets to work on the bed. By the time I emerge from the
toilet, she’s hurled away the covers, the cases, the pillows, the woolen
260 K laus K inski

blankets, and she’s already lying on the mattress in a fuck position.

Her back and her skull are against the headboard, which consists of a
decrepit mirror. After splaying her legs against her shoulders like a
contortionist, she shoves out her hips, pulls her labia apart with both
hands, and opens her pussy like a secret door. Her entire lower body
catapults up as if from a trampoline—and my dick feels like it’s
charged with heavy current. . . . She’s all fuck and wants nothing but
to get fucked, nonstop, ruthlessly and endlessly. . . .

Sometimes I manage to talk Minhoi* into trying to live with me again,

and I scurry around hunting for a large, bright apartment with enough
room for both of us—and especially enough space and light for Nan-
hoi*. This is very difficult because it has to be located right near the
Bois de Boulogne so that Nanhoi can play and we don’t have to drive
through the poisonous and dangerous Paris traffic. Now and again we
check a few possibilities together. But then something happens, and
we blow it. Still, no matter how much Minhoi assures me that we’ll
never live together anymore, I keep telling myself that it’s because I
haven’t found the ideal apartment yet, and so I don’t stop looking at
apartments and town houses. I’m obsessed with the juvenile idea that
I can save our little family if I really rent one of these places.

I can’t see her face from behind; she’s window-shopping at a boutique

in Montparnasse. All I can see is her high butt, which hypnotizes me
all the way from the other side of the street. The sight of an ass like
that, which you normally see only on black women, goes right to my
nuts. The first black woman I savored was an American student in
Paris, even before I met Jasmin. Her creamy goo—white lava gushing
over my face and tongue—tasted sharp and exotically sweet, like wild
 Kinski Uncut 261

honey. She smelled so bewilderingly like a beast woman that I

couldn’t tell whether it was her aroma or the countless orgasms that
made me dizzy.
I yearn for the smell of a black woman. I cross the street and move
so close to her that my boner almost grazes her ass cheeks. Her raven­
ous animal face is mirrored in the shop window. She turns toward me.
Face to face with this black woman who was born to fuck, I stutter and
stammer so disgustingly that she smiles and places two fingers of her
wet hand on my lips as if saying, “Save your breath for fucking.”
During the first few days she comes to my apartment regularly,
but she stays for only a couple of fucks. She’s shacked up with a guy
who’s keeping her, and she’s also very busy running around, tele­
phoning and meeting embassy and government officials to help re­
lease her father, a former member of the Ethiopian cabinet. He’s been
in prison in Addis Ababa ever since the negus got toppled.
The hookers on Avenue Foch are as famous as the ones in Pigalle,
on Rue Saint-Denis, and at the Bois de Boulogne. On Avenue Foch
they work both sidewalks, the entire length of the street. Naturally
they get as far as Number 33. The whores of Avenue Foch and its sur­
roundings are individually very distinct. Even in fucking. And I mean
the way they move and behave, and especially the way they’re
dressed. The ones on Avenue Foch usually wear tight, short skirts,
like women who’ve pulled up their skirts to take a leak. Their undies
are barely large enough to cover their righteous pussies.
Toward the end of the night they usually have no panties on, or
no skirts. They wear only a coat, under which they’re either stark
naked or wear just a bra and garters.
The other kind, who hang out more on the Champs-Élysées and
the streets approaching the Arc de Triomphe, wear normal, middle-
class stuff, very bourgeois, so as not to arouse suspicions that they’re
streetwalkers. Maybe these are the same clothes they wear all over and
262 Klaus Kinski

all the time. They don’t look the least bit like hookers. Or fucked out
or wiped out, except that some of them have slightly bluish shadows
under their eyes, but they make cunning use of powder. They don’t
smoke or drink—at least not when they’re hooking, and they probably
sleep their fill after the strains of fucking. I’m convinced that some of
them even work out in order to stay fit. If you don’t take a closer look
they seem uninteresting, even boring. In short, they melt completely
into the crowd of pedestrians, and no one would give them a second
glance, much less try to hit on them, if they’re weren’t standing on a
corner or pacing to and fro, or hanging out at bus stops without ever
stepping into a bus. But they do that, too, with a feminine instinct: the
way they move and act as if they weren’t interested in the glances of a
male passerby, the way they check their watches from time to time,
peering in different directions as if they were waiting for someone spe­
cial, a close friend—in other words, they pretend they have a date,
maybe with a boyfriend or a husband. They never address anyone or
challenge anyone with their eyes or return the glances of an unknown
man. You have to catch them, know them, discover them, and get
right down to the nitty-gritty. And they don’t always stand at the same
crossing or walk the same beat. Nor do they work every day, for that
matter. Or maybe they work different neighborhoods each day. One
thing is clear: They live in some very distant arrondissement, so that
no one around here knows them. These are perfectly normal home­
makers, wives and mothers, university or even high school students
earning money on the side. At the same time, of course, they’re horny
as all get-out—or at least they get that way once they’ve licked blood.
Sex is like a drug, and they become hopelessly addicted.
I merely pull their skirts up and their panties a little down, expos­
ing the asshole, the butt, and the twat and some of their thigh flesh.
Then I fuck them from behind as they bend over—or like a bug, on
my back. Sometimes I have them lie on their backs on the table, hold­
 Kinski Uncut 2 63

ing their knees apart as I shoot. A concentrated load. No more. Al­

though women like this fuck very sweetly, they’re anything but cun­
ning or kinky. They’re not even trained, though I can imagine that
they must have had their share of dicks. They’re even nervous and
embarrassed, and in a touchingly bashful way they offer the fuck posi­
tion that they may be used to taking with their husbands. Or else it’s
the position in which they have the most powerful orgasms. Or in
which a big cock hurts the least, and so forth. They do it, as I’ve said,
cunningly, through passive resistance, avoiding any other position
and slipping back into their favorite way of fucking. But I never let
them get that far—I fuck them ruthlessly and thoroughly. Many
women—and this is quite natural—want to be taken violently, and
they spurt more strongly when they’re raped. They turn out to be
super-horny fuckers.
One of them, on towering high heels, does a spontaneous belly
landing over the back of my only chair—she’s like a sacrificial lamb on
an altar. But, contrary to what you’d expect, she doesn’t pull in the
small of her back or open up her ass so that her pussy squeezes out. In­
stead she bends her spine like a drawn bow and tightly squeezes her
ass cheeks together, turning them down. Dripping wet, she goes totally
ballistic, yammering and whimpering as she grabs for my nuts and
comes long and hard. So do I. Then she says good night with lowered
eyes, as if she’s committed a sin that she secretly but obviously enjoys.
A week later I see her standing at a different street corner.

A Paris lawyer writes me that Minhoi* has hired him to start divorce
proceedings. He’d like to meet with me to discuss the possibility of an
agreement between me and Minhoi. But I don’t want to meet with
him. I don’t want to talk to anyone about a divorce. I don’t even want
to think about it. I burn the letter.
264 K laus K inski

Today, as always, I sprint along, wheeling my Nanhol from Av­

enue Foch to the Bois de Boulogne. He smiles and looks at me as if he
knew how ineffably sad I am. I take him out of the carriage and toss
him in the air, which he loves. He keeps calling, “Again! Again!”
Then his diapers come off and fly in all directions, and he howls with
laughter, whirling his arms like two propellers, the way humming­
birds do. Oh, God! Don’t let my baby boy notice anything about the
unbridgeable gulf that’s opened up between me and Minhoi! No, I
don’t want to think about the divorce. Not now. Not when I’m with
my son. I want to be merry for him, exuberant. The more exuberant
and boisterous I am, the happier it makes him. I want to make faces,
grimaces that’ll make him burst into roaring laughter as they always
have since his birth. I don’t want to be a sad clown à la Pagliacci, the
kind who really screams in pain when he laughs. My Nanhol would
notice; he feels everything. I want to be a merry clown, a silly
prankster, doing the most ridiculous and nonsensical things. I also
want to be in form for my son and teach him all the tricks and ploys
that I learned when I was a little street urchin. I want to teach him all
the games a boy can play. I also have to tell him about all the potential
dangers that constantly lurk everywhere. I never try to force anything
on him, except when he has to be protected. I never say “Do this” or
“Do that,” or utter nonsense like “You should be able to do that by
now” or “You’re old enough now,” and so forth. What does “old
enough” mean? What does “old” mean, or “enough”? Does it mean
that a small child has been small long enough? I wish my child would
never have any age at all. No child should ever have an age!
I’m incapable of enjoying anything without my Nanhol. Anything
at all. I live solely for my son, whom I love beyond all earthly and
heavenly things. I live for him alone.
Without Nanhoi the nights on Avenue Foch are worse than any­
thing I’ve ever endured. Worse than prison. Worse than a nuthouse.
 Kinski Uncut 2 65

The instant I’m done fucking or getting a blow job, I want the
chick to leave. Sometimes a girl keeps sucking me all over until I fi­
nally let her sleep with me, but if she tries to cuddle I kick her away.
It’s only when Nanhoi spends the night in my arms that I can for­
get the damnation I’m living in. Then, to avoid waking my baby boy, I
don’t stir all night long. Even if I drift off, I don’t move in my sleep.
Only my lips very cautiously and carefully breathe a kiss on his little
head. And when he wakes up in the morning, I press big, wild, thick
kisses on his head. Then my baby boy climbs on top of me, sits on my
face, and reels offlong tirades in divine baby language, which only ba­
bies understand. And he emphatically waves his little arms as if giving
a speech to all the other babies in the world.
Then that same bleakness when Minhoi picks him up. The empti­
ness, in which I think no thoughts and feel no feelings, and then the
sudden, horrible awareness of my loneliness without him and my tor­
turous despair, from which I see no way out.
Then the telephoning starts. First every day, then several times a
day, then every hour, I beg and beg Minhoi to bring me my son. The
arguing. The screaming. Threats. Hangups. Redialing. And hanging
up again and redialing again. Until Minhoi refuses to pick up, and I,
half-crazy, go running through Paris. If it’s still light out—that is, not
truly dark—I have to use out-of-the-way back streets to avoid being
seen. I don’t want to talk; I don’t want to hear or see anything. Espe­
cially not that doorman with the butcher face. I’m convinced he’d vol­
unteer to hang someone. Then those whorish aristocrats and those
trash millionaires, who size you up with shameless, vulgar eyes, treat­
ing you according to the car you drive. I have no car and no money,
not even a face that I can show. And I live in a torture chamber.
If it’s light out, perhaps even sunny, I have to spend the whole day
in this mass grave of cement. From left to right. From right to left. In a
circle. From right to left. From left to right. Two steps to windowless
266 Klaus K inski

bath and toilet. And out again. To the flowerless concrete balcony.
Look up. Look down. Look left. Look right. At all the other flower­
less balconies. I mustn’t lean too far over the railing, because the
doorman may be talking to a Rolls-Royce chauffeur, twisting and
turning his fat head like a TV camera, with his eyes constantly
sweeping across the façade of 33 Avenue Foch. The din from the
street crashes in on me from all sides, numbing my mind, sending my
legs reeling back. When I then shove the heavy steel frame and shut
the large glass door to escape the deadly stream of traffic and the
pneumatic hammers, and the lock snaps in like that of a steel cell
door—then I struggle with madness and death. It is purely owing to
Nanhoi’s love and my love for him that I have eluded death so far and
not fallen prey to madness.
Once it’s dark out, I run like a driven quarry through dimmer
back streets. But this gets harder and harder the closer I get to the
business district, which I have to cross, but which is ablaze with glar­
ing neon lights. Then there’s the barrage of streetlights and head­
lights. Avenue George-V and the Champs-Élysées become an all-out
gauntlet, but I’m forced to run it—even if I do it farther down on the
quais, which would be a detour. Either way, I reach the Seine, where I
hurry along down by the water as much as I can. In the evening, espe­
cially when it’s raining, there’s no one there aside from tramps. You
can’t see all the dog shit in the dark, and you stumble over garbage
and rubbish, banging your bones. But that wouldn’t matter if it
weren’t for the bridges, where I have to return to the busy and garishly
illuminated streets. Nevertheless this route is the one where I have the
least chance of being seen. And it’s also the fastest. After dashing the
six miles, I vanish inside the driveway of 82 Rue St.-Louis-en-l’Ile and
breathlessly sneak up the five flights to Minhoi’s apartment. I use the
steps even though this ancient building has the only elevator on the
entire island. The ramshackle elevator makes such a deafening noise
 Kinski Uncut 2 6 7

that it sounds like cattle cars when their steel bumpers smash into one
another. Besides, someone upstairs may have pressed the button,
making the brutal and senile elevator stop at a different floor on its
way up. Then I’d have to face one of the tenants. They all know me,
and perhaps they make fun of my situation. Also, the space is so
cramped that there’s no room for two passengers unless they squeeze
together. Maybe someone on the fifth floor has rung for the elevator.
Maybe it’s even Minhoi. Or maybe she’s in the kitchen, which is next
to the apartment door. Or in the hallway or the dining room or the liv­
ing room. But even in her bedroom or Nanhoi’s nursery, which is at
the other end of the apartment, she’d hear the unbearable din made by
that horror of an elevator. When it jerks to a stop, the noise is so dev­
astating that it leaves cracks in the walls of the staircase. She’d auto­
matically prick up her ears to find out if someone’s getting in or out, if
the person’s looking for her and is about to press her buzzer, or if it’s
one of her neighbors coming home. If so, then right after the elevator’s
arrival she’d hear the jangling of keys, the opening and slamming of an
apartment door. Any other passenger would be looking for a neighbor
or an acquaintance. In that case, he would buzz the appropriate apart­
ment. If Minhoi didn’t hear this logical sequence of familiar sounds,
she might get suspicious. On no account can I risk her suddenly
opening the door. She must never have so much as an inkling that I of­
ten come here without letting her know in advance and getting her
permission. I feel like someone who’s committed a misdeed and has to
hide. Is it criminal of me to love my boy so much that I can’t live with­
out him? How I envy every other father—when he comes home, he can
take his son in his arms and kiss him and kiss him and keep kissing him
as often as he likes. He can sit down on the floor where his son is play­
ing. He can give him a piggyback ride. Lean over his boy’s bed, lift him
up, feel the sturdy little arms wrapped around his neck. Cuddle
him, squeeze him, roughhouse with him until both are exhausted from
268 Klaus Kinski

playing and they laugh and joyfully collapse and fall asleep mouth to
mouth. . . . Feed his boy on his lap even though he can long since
hold the spoon and eat by himself. Press his lips to the back of the
boy’s warm, fragrant head . . . Then take him to beddy-bye—wait till
he’s asleep after telling him a story and singing him a lullaby . . .
I picture what it would be like if I now took two or three steps at a
time after calling out Nanhoi’s name from the bottom of the stairs . . .
and then, wildly impatient, banged both fists and both feet on the
door until Minhoi or my son opened up because none of us could wait
to hold one another tight and cover one another with kisses . . . In­
stead, I have to steal up soundlessly. Hold my breath. Not stir.
Cower. Hug the wall halfway up a flight. Hit the floor, my face in the
dirt, if anyone else is using the stairs because the elevator is too slow
or is out of order. Than I have to race all the way down and hide be­
hind the garbage cans until the person’s left the building. Then I skulk
back up the five flights. On every landing I have to be prepared in case
a tenant suddenly opens an apartment door that I’m slinking past. I
can never tell whether anyone’s watching me through the peephole.
On the fifth floor I first listen for any noise from the two neighbor­
ing doors. If I do hear anything, I try to interpret it and picture what
the person may be doing. What they’re about to do. Whether the
sounds indicate that they’re on the verge of opening the door. If noth­
ing stirs, I still shouldn’t be fooled, I have to listen closely anyway.
Minhoi’s apartment is only two feet from the stairs. After tiptoeing
one step I wait for a long time because the worm-eaten floorboards
creak and I have to make certain that no one’s standing behind the
door, watching every move I make. Then I tiptoe the second step—
that is, I very quietly pull my other foot over the floor and then distrib­
ute my weight over both feet as I carefully lower my heels. Now I’m
standing fully on both soles again. This also takes a long time because
even shifting my body weight from my toes to my soles makes the
 Kinski Uncut 2 6 9

boards creak. Now I’m so close to the door that I can almost graze it
with my mouth, and I run my fingertips across it like a blind man or a
deaf-mute, someone who goes by vibrations, picking up sounds and
even spoken words. I listen with my entire body . . . for Nanhoi’s
voice or even his laugh. . . . The scurrying of his feet. . . the wheels of
his small wooden tricycle on the stone floor of the hallway . . . his ball
bouncing against the door . . . the clattering of his spoon or plate if
he’s sitting at his little table. . . . Building blocks . . . tops . . . a rubber
animal that squeaks when he steps on it or squeezes it with his fists . . .
breathing . . .
But I don’t want to be pushy. I’m happy and thankful just to hear
Nanhoi standing on the kitchen garbage can, where Minhoi puts him
so he can watch her cook. Just to hear the sounds she makes, any
sound, so I know they’re both here! The lid on a pot. The faucet. The
toilet flushing. A window. A drawer. Broom noises. Laundry being
washed. Anything at all. Just to know they’re nearby. Then every­
thing’s fine. My God! I believe Nanhoi is standing right behind the
door. He often stays there for a long time, peering at a tiny part of
something he’s found, tinier than the head of a pin. I cautiously kneel
down . . . right where my fingertips feel that his wet, half-open mouth
must be—and I press my mouth on the wood with its gray coat of
paint. The stench of turpentine jabs into my nose, irritating my mu­
cous membranes. But only a fraction of an inch of wood separates my
lips from the lips of my baby boy, who presses his mouth against the
wood on the other side. . . . I hear little words bubbling in French; I
don’t understand them. . . . And then two syllables that slash into my
soul and make me so ineffably happy: “Papa . . . ”
The shock of hearing the elevator is like the blade of a guillotine,
as if I’d been kneeling for my execution. The instant I hear the iron
grille open, I dash down all five flights on tiptoe. Was it all my imagi­
nation? I’ll never know. And what if Minhoi and Nanhoi were coming
270 Klaus Kinski

home in the elevator? Normally I’d have heard his little voice all the
way up the staircase. But often he’s so worn out from playing that he
falls asleep in Minhoi’s arms or mine, and we carry him straight to his
little bed. I hear a door being unlocked, but from down here I can’t
tell which of the three doors it is on the top story.
Before dashing the six miles back to Avenue Foch, I run across the
bridge linking the lie Saint-Louis to Notre-Dame and then along the
street to the small park of the cathedral, where even the flower beds are
behind bars. And where a policeman blows his shrill whistle the instant
a little child kicks a ball. And the policeman drives the mother and her
children out of the park the moment the belfry clock strikes closing
time, and then, like a prison guard, he locks the iron gates of the park of
this infamous Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Inside this park, which is en­
tirely surrounded by bars and which is not much bigger than an acre,
there’s a small sandbox, where Nanhoi often plays. Most important,
this is where the swings are. Not like those in Luna Park, which have a
minimum age requirement because they can turn you upside down.
The swings here are for little kids, but they fly fairly high, so that every
child has to be tied in. Nanhoi* is utterly intoxicated by these swings,
and that’s the first place he pulls me to when we enter the park.
I often come here secretly, hoping to spot Nanhoi on a swing or
in the sandbox and at least to watch him, if only from far away. Then
I have to hide behind parked cars or other pedestrians, or duck be­
hind baby carriages, to keep Nanhoi from noticing me. Or else I
sneak through the bushes surrounding the cathedral and creep as
close as possible to the sandbox so I can watch my son through the
branches. I’d love to whisper, “Psssst!” and beckon him over. But
Minhoi would notice, for no mother lets her child out of sight here
for even an instant. I know it’s silly looking for Nanhoi in the park at
this time of day. The gate is already chained and padlocked. Never­
theless my eyes wander about, and I peer every which way, hoping to
 Kinski Uncut 2 71

glimpse Minhoi and Nanhoi. Even when a tourist boat passes under
the bridge, I try to make out Minhoi and Nanhoi among the numer­
ous passengers staring up at the bridges. I’d then wave at them from
the bridge. And once they vanished under the bridge, I’d dash over
to the opposite balustrade and watch them emerging on the other
side. And I’d run along the quais as fast as humanly possible, keeping
up with the boat and waving until it disappeared around a bend in
the river.
I don’t believe they’re on a boat, but I cling to anything—no mat­
ter how absurd—that occurs to me in my desperate plight.
I don’t find them anywhere. I usually don’t. I don’t know where
to turn; I run along the quais as far as Avenue George-V and then
zigzag grotesquely through the darkest and most deserted back
streets until I reach Avenue Foch. When I see Number 33 in the dis­
tance, I shy away like a horse, refusing to go any farther. I feel as if
I’m voluntarily climbing into my grave. What should I do? Where
should I go? Those questions hammer in my brain as I crawl into a
thicket in the Bois de Boulogne and, exhausted and despairing, fall
asleep.

More French flicks. I don’t know how many—ten or twelve, perhaps

more. I don’t ask about the titles or the directors. All that’s important
is getting money. I buy a four-wheel Range Rover. At last there’s room
for Nanho’i and his toys.
Whenever I see Nanhoi now, he tells me that he’s going to Egypt
with Mommy. With a concentrated effort, he keeps forming and re­
forming the two difficult syllables, as if rehearsing difficult notes on a
flute—and triumphantly succeeding: “E-gg-y-pt.”
During the last few days before they leave, I’m allowed to stay in
their apartment, and also for the three weeks they’ll be away. Three
2 7 2 Klaus K inski

weeks! That’s the first time I’ll be separated from Minhoi and Nanhoi
for such a long period. I can’t even manage to picture it.
But at least until their departure, I can see my baby boy all day
long. Play with him. Roughhouse with him.
When I take Minhoi and Nanhoi* to the airport, I still don’t fully
realize what I’m in for. It’s only as I’m heading back to Paris that a
horrible emptiness suddenly emerges from the earth, when I picture
Minhoi and Nanhoi, now over thirty thousand feet in the air and mov­
ing farther and farther away from me. I’m haunted by that thought. If
only I could hit on something. My thoughts are like a teeming mass of
worms.

There’s that frizzy-haired girl who spoke to me after the screening of

my Japanese flick at Claude Lelouch’s Club 13. Her tight black curls
twist and writhe like a brood of snakes. Eyes set in deep slits, the
brows above them linking up like black wire. The ski nose opens^ its
nostrils, greedily pulling up the upper lip. The bared canines are
rounded, probably because she sucked her thumb for too many years.
Ideal for sucking dick now . . .
I call for her at her grandparents’ place. On the way back we pass
the Bois de Boulogne. I park in the first convenient spot, just beyond
the entrance, because neither of us can wait. When I rip off her clothes
in the backseat, a man’s face appears at the side window. I have just
enough time to see her body: bony . . . childlike torso and tits . . . hot,
raw, taut skin . . . wide pelvis; firm, small, oval ass cheeks . . . The
man presses his lecherous face against the glass. I know that a lot of
men do this. They loiter in these areas merely to watch other people
fucking and to jerk off. Okay. I climb into the driver’s seat without my
pants—while the chick remains naked, covering herself with her
panties. Pretending to lose my bearings, I keep driving in a circle, un­
 Kinski Uncut 2 73

able to decide where to go—almost paralyzed by horniness, like a cat

in mating season. I drive across the sidewalk to a bridle path and stop.
Her body is hairy. The hair isn’t dense, but it’s all over. Hard
black hair creeps all the way up to her belly. From her armpits. Over
her arms, legs. On the back of her neck, her vertebrae, all the way
down to her butt crack . . . Once again men are sneaking around the
car, vanishing into the shadows of the darkness setting in. They must
have followed us. Or maybe not—the park is filled with them. We
have no choice but to take a stab at it somewhere else. So to the speed­
way. No matter where to. I have to spurt my come into the girl right
away. When I think we’ve shaken our pursuers, I veer into the first
right-hand exit and head toward an area with as few lights as possible.
Her little pussy is firm and almost round, like a field mouse.
There! Another face? This time at the rear window. I can’t stand it
any longer—I dig my borer vertically into her cunt. Grossly twisting
her face, shutting her slanting eyes, she shrieks and shrieks. . . . She
doesn’t notice the man at the rear window watching us fuck.
Propped on her shoulder blades and cervical vertebra, she sinks
deep into the backseat, her legs splaying high above her head,
shoves up her free-floating torso, and screams and spurts and
screams and spurts and spurts. Then we head over to Minhoi’s
apartment and fuck all night long.
In the morning, for no reason at all, she starts blabbering about
Communism, so I kick her out.

I haven’t heard from Minhoi and Nanhoi since they flew to Egypt,
and they’re incommunicado. I have no address, phone number, or
hotel—I don’t even know what part of Egypt they’re in. Minhoi
wanted to travel way down south and cruise the Nile in a felucca.
And suddenly I feel as if I’ve spoken, heard, or read the word
274 K laus K inski

“Egypt” several times during the past few days. Wherever you
look, headlines about airplane accidents. Railroad accidents. H i­
jackers. I never read newspapers. But the headlines insidiously try
to invade you, like deadly, contagious diseases, as if waiting for
someone like me, someone whose tense and irritable condition
teeters on paranoia and whose nerves are shot. Which makes him
especially vulnerable.
Even in the apartment I catch only fragments of TV newscasts,
which I switch on accidentally, never on purpose. I don’t know my
way around the buttons and I often press the wrong ones. I never un­
derstand what the anchormen are talking about and I can’t make head
or tail of the commercials. This time I feel as I’ve caught the word
“Egypt”—or did I see it in a front-page headline? I’m not quite sure. I
buy all the newspapers and listen to the nauseating TV news. Those
voices! But there’s nothing about Egypt in the papers or on TV. Yet I
could have sworn that I’ve repeatedly heard or read the word
“Egypt.” Maybe it was days ago. In my condition I have no control
over time and logic.
It takes sixteen days for Minhoi’s and Nanhoi’s picture postcard
to get from the Pyrénées to Paris. Who knows where my darlings may
be now?
It’s late in the evening when the telegram guy buzzes and hands
me a wire from Minhoi, who says they’re coming back. I want to race
out to the airport right now, this very instant, three days ahead of
time, and spend the nights there waiting for them.
I get to the airport two hours early. I don’t understand a word of
the banging and bleating that pour out of the loudspeakers, announc­
ing each landing and takeoff. Nor do I rely on the monitors indicating
the airlines, flight numbers, arrivals, and delays. I scurry nonstop
from exit to exit, checking out every passenger, no matter what line
he’s flown in on.
 Kinski Uncut 2 75

I was right. Minhoi plane arrives much earlier than it is ex­

pected. She’s quickly pushing Nanhoi in his stroller, almost running
toward the stairs leading to the baggage claim. At first all I see of
Nanhoi is his teensy head. When they left, he looked much bigger
because his full, long hair hung way over his shoulders. Now his
hair’s been cut short, almost shorn—he’s like a little lamb. I pick him
up from the stroller, and we kiss each other, and I don’t let him out
of my arms until we reach Minhoi’s apartment, where I put him
to bed.
Minhoi says that my place on Avenue Foch is a waste of money
since I spend most of my time in her apartment. But neither of us has
any illusions. The longer I live with her, the more we fight. And the
more we fight, the more we lunge away at one another, and the more
monstrous and violent and terrible our arguments and fistfights.
We’re not like married couples who live together out of sheer habit
and hate each other because they’re no longer interested in each
other. Oh, no! Quite the contrary! We’re driven by passion. By jeal­
ousy. Suspicion. Love. Despair. Which generate accusations and re­
venge that turn into fury.
If we go at it full force in Nanhoi’s presence because we’re both
more explosive than nitroglycerin, or if he hears us shouting, he
comes dashing into the room and throws himself between us to pry us
apart. He grabs each of us with a little fist and braces his feet against
our shoes to hold us apart. He’s ready to kick us if we dare go at it
again.
If Nanhoi sees us kissing or hugging or just caressing, then he en­
velops our legs, pulling us together in a single body, as if refusing to
ever let us separate again.
Minhoi can no longer endure the mental anguish I inflict upon
her, the “violent ebbs and flows,” as she puts it. She says I suffocate
her. She accuses me of having made all decisions for her from the
276 Klaus K inski

very start. Her clothes, her makeup, her hair, her nail polish, her
underwear—everything. I’ve never seen it that way. I never meant to
“decide” anything for her. I didn’t want to patronize or stifle her. I
never wanted to curtail her freedom—after all, I can’t live without
freedom myself! Today I understand that jealousy spells slavery for
all of us. Patronizing and violating are nothing but the unceasing
process of creation: formation, destruction, reshaping, changing—
everything, constantly, incessantly. But that doesn’t mean that I ig­
nore, much less exclude, Minhoi’s imagination, her ideas, gifts,
wishes, decisions. Picasso painted with his fingers even in the sand
on a beach. It is the creative process going forward. I can’t help it, it
simply happens.
Minhoi says, Everything about you is too much!” Those are her
words; I’ve been hearing them for years and I can’t hear them any­
more. When I was a child people were already telling me that I had
“no self-control.”
Minhoi says I have “too much” love. “Too much” passion. My
yearnings, my desires are “too immense.” I’m “too sensitive.”
“Too sentimental.” “Too wild.” “Too exuberant.” “Too cheer­
ful.” “Too silly.” “Too sad.” “Too noisy.” “Too quiet.” “Too
nasty.” “Too good.” “Too softhearted.” “Too ruthless.” “Too ten­
der.” “Too brutal.” “T oo,” “too,” “too,” “too,” “too,” “too,”
“too,” “too,” “too” . . .

I follow Minhoi like a fool when she heads to the market. Then I can
carry my baby boy in my arms, push him in a stroller. In order to be
with Nanhoi, I put up with any humiliation. I let Minhoi boss me
around, cut me off. But the more I put up with, the worse we fight.
Once again Minhoi sends me packing to Avenue Foch and refuses to
let me visit her and Nanhoi in their apartment.
 Kinski Uncut 2 77

Minhoi’s been given a date in divorce court, and I’m subpoenaed. I’m
reluctant to set foot in the building. But I have no choice because I
can’t afford an attorney for now.
Upon entering the building with its sticky shade, I feel as if I’m
walking into a slaughterhouse on its day off. I reach the top floor, and
when I arrive in the room were Minhoi and I are to be divorced, the
insanity of all mankind sticks to me like cold sweat. The judge blab­
bers about some flick he saw me in. I holler at him and dash out of the
room—lemme outa here! Minhoi’s lawyer brings me back in from the
corridor, saying that the judge will lock me up if I ever yell at him
again and run away. Minhoi is very embarrassed. Finally the judge
says we ought to take another stab at it, especially for the sake of our
little boy. The divorce is put off for six months.

Whenever I see flowers, I want to take them to Minhoi. She usually

doesn’t want my flowers, or she doesn’t even care. But when I see
flowers, I forget that and I bring her some as often as I can. This
morning I once again brought her some—a huge bouquet of cheerful,
colorful blossoms. Then I had to go on location, outside Paris.
In the evening, I’m back in my goddamn cage on Avenue Foch.
There’s a huge bouquet of cheerful, colorful flowers on the table. My
heart melts when I see the bouquet—especially because of the letter
lying next to it: I recognize Minhoi’s handwriting. I assume that she’s
sent me the flowers. And even though they look just like the ones I
brought her this morning, I don’t understand that they’re the same
ones. And why are they here on Avenue Foch and not in Minhoi’s
apartment on the lie Saint-Louis? Even when I read and reread the
letter, it won’t sink in. . . . I don’t understand what Minhoi means
278 Klaus K inski

when she says “going away” and “for a long time.” . . . I don’t under­
stand why the flowers are here and not in her apartment . . . or why
she and Nanhoi are no longer here . . . or why she brings me flowers
when she’s inflicting a mortal wound on me . . . or why the flowers are
the same ones I gave her this morning. . . . Reality takes effect like a
very slow poison. . . .
She doesn’t say where she’s gone to. Or for how long. She only
writes, “for a long time,” saying she can’t stand it anymore. Once
again no address. No phone number. Nothing.

After weeks of hunting Minhoi and Nanhoi through the whole of Eu­
rope, I’ve found them on the Spanish island of Ibiza.

Herzog rings me up at Avenue Foch at one A.M., asking if I want to

play the title roles in Nosferatu and Woyzeck. I yell at him for calling
me up at one a . m ., but I agree. I’ve totally forgotten that ten years ago I
refused to play Woyzeck onstage because it’s suicide, and I tossed the
script into a garbage can. I don’t know why I’ve said yes this time. It’s
all destiny, no doubt. It’s not me who decides, it’s my destiny that
agrees or rejects for me. A greater power. And there must be some sig­
nificance (even though I don’t give a fuck) in the fact that I play parts
involving what I have to experience myself but can barely endure. Or
do I have to experience it personally after playing the part? Is it a
warning or a repetition? Is it a chain reaction? Does one detonate the
other? Or do both happen simultaneously—my life, and the part I
have to play? Do I transfer other people’s hells to my own life, or do I
transfer my own life to the character I have to play? Does the event in
question occur in my own life through mystical force, so that I may
suffer more deeply when I have to play the part? No one can answer
 Kinski Uncut 279

these questions. In any case, it’s part of the curse of being—as they put
it—“the ultimate actor.” Which, however, has nothing to do with this
hammy bullshit.

Minhoi insists on the divorce. The judge grants her petition. I dash out
of the deadly room, down the stairs, through the hall—where a hand­
cuffed man is led past me and a buckling, crying woman presses her
handkerchief to her mouth. I dash out of the court, into the street. I
feel as if people are uncamouflaged—like in Hieronymus Bosch’s
paintings, but a lot more disgusting. I have to see NanhoÜ I race along
the quais. I keep turned away from the pedestrians and vehicles. I feel
as if everyone were gaping at me, even the cars, even from far off—the
way people push and shove, trying to watch an execution, or drive
slower past an accident scene to gawk at the victims. They stare at me.
A monster. An Elephant Man. Too disfigured not to be discovered. It
is my shriek that dashes through the streets, not belonging anywhere.
At the Notre-Dame sandbox, I grab Nanhoi* into my arms, and my
tears drop down to the sand behind him.
A girl’s been watching him during the divorce proceedings, and I
tell her she can leave. I want to be alone with my son and far, far away.
When I bring Nanhoi to Minhoi’s apartment for lunch, she blocks
my way in the staircase, refusing to let me pass.

Nosferatu for Twentieth Century Fox. In Holland and Czecho­

slovakia and all the way to the Tatra Mountains on the Czech-Polish
border.
The departure point is Munich. Four weeks before shooting
starts, I have to fly there for costuming. And this is where I shave my
skull for the first time. I feel exposed, vulnerable, defenseless. Not just
280 K laus K inski

physically (my bare head becomes as hypersensitive as an open

wound) but chiefly in my emotions and my nerves. I feel as if I have no
scalp, as if my protective envelope has been removed and my soul
can’t live without it. As if my soul had been flayed.
At first I go outdoors only when it’s dark (I’ve been through that
with The Idiot, but this is much, much worse). Besides, I wear a wool
cap all the time even though it’s spring. You may think, “So what?
Some guys are bald.” But the two have absolutely nothing to do with
one another. What I mean is the simultaneous metamorphosis into a
vampire. That nonhuman, nonanimal being. That undead thing. That
unspeakable creature, which suffers in full awareness of its existence.
Currently I leave home only to go to my costume tryouts.
When we fly to Holland, Minhol and Nanhoi follow. And even
though I have to shoot most of the time, often all through the night, I
can at least see my baby boy asleep or at breakfast before they pick me
up for the day’s work.
Herzog has put up the entire gang in a ramshackle house, where
they camp on the floor like pigs, in groups of three or more. The chow
is inedible.
When we move from Holland to Czechoslovakia, Minho’i and
Nanhoi fly back to Paris.
I demand a trailer that I pick myself so I can live in it, sleep in
it, cook, and do my laundry. I don’t want to be billeted in some
shitty Czech hotel, where you run into the whole motley crew after
shooting.
Nosferatu is finally done. And then without a break and in the
same dump: Woyzeck. The worst fate I’ve ever suffered in a movie. I’ve
already said that the story of Woyzek is suicide. Self-laceration. Every
shooting day, every scene, every angle, every photogram.
At night in my trailer, which they’ve stationed in a deserted park,
I bang my head against the wall. I truly believe that I’ve gone crazy.
 Kinski Uncut 281

But I won’t let madness off the hook. I’ll fight. I weep, shriek, get
feverish, run through the pitch-black park, get plastered on piss-warm
beer because there’s no ice. I bring back girls and usually kick them
out before I even bother to fuck them.
In deathly panic, I keep pushing the shooting along as if I had to
get it over with before madness gets the upper hand. I don’t have to
“rehearse” or listen to the crap spewed out by Herzog’s brain. I tell
Herzog, I warn him, to keep his trap shut and leave me be. This time
he appears to catch my drift—at least, he keeps his trap shut. Today,
after sixteen days of filming, there’s only one scene left. The scene in
which Woyzeck stabs his wife and then, holding her corpse in his
hands, succumbs to madness. It’s three A.M. I tell Herzog I’m gonna
shoot the scene only once. There’s no such thing as repeating death
and insanity!
After the take, I’m running through the pitch-black park when I
hear a vehement sobbing. It’s Eva Mattes, who plays my wife in the
movie and whom I murdered in the scene we just shot. She’s trem­
bling from head to foot, shrieking, on a crying jag. I take her in my
arms, bring her to her hotel, and wash the blood off me. I’m supposed
to be driven across the border to Vienna; from there I’m to fly to Paris.
But everyone’s vanished. The entire company. All of them. As if they
were fleeing the madness triggered by the film.
At my hotel in Vienna, I can’t take off my shoes and stockings
without rolling on the floor.
During the opening credits, Woyzeck is drilled in the barracks
courtyard. He’s tortured with rifle exercises, push-ups, squats until
he collapses. And whenever he collapses, a booted sergeant kicks him
in the back of the neck. That’s what I wanted, it was my idea, and I
had told the actor playing the sergeant to keep kicking until I really
couldn’t take it anymore. Which is what happened. When I tried to
straighten up one last time and with my last ounce of strength, I really
282 K laus K inski

collapsed. For days on end I couldn’t walk without help from other
people.
It’s gonna take me a long time to recover. But the damage done to
my soul is a lot worse.
On a street in Paris, a dog eyes me, and I can’t help crying. What
did I do to the dog? Or rather, what did it do to me, compelling me
to cry? I also have to cry when I see people, objects. I’m pained by
the sight of anything I look at. By anything I hear, by anything I
think, feel.
I want to see my baby boy! But I find a letter from Minhoi telling
me she’s flown to Mexico with him. This time she doesn’t say for
how long.

Nastassja’s doing a flick with Roman Polanski in northern France:

Tess. I visit her, and we spend nearly a week together. Polanski shows
me the first few dailies. Nastassja is overwhelming. But deeply as I
miss her, I can’t feel good so long as I don’t know where Minhoi and
Nanhol are, how they are. My anxieties about them and my longing
for them are like thorns growing through my heart. Day and night,
every moment. So I can’t fall asleep at night or get any rest, even
though Nastassja’s there. I return to Paris and wait for Minhoi to call
me from Mexico.
I can’t say how many weeks it’s been since she flew to Mexico
with Nanhol. I can’t even think in terms of time.
In the middle of the night the phone rings: Minhoi is calling from
Mexico. When she tells me to come, all I can think of is flying to her and
Nanhol at the crack of dawn, on the very first plane to Mexico City.
When the taxi in Mexico City brings me to the hotel where
they’re waiting for me, my heart pounds so intensely that it hurts.
This time it’s pounding with joy. Suddenly I’m afraid to make the
 Kinski Uncut 283

slightest sound as I dash up the staircase, so I halt. . . . I’m terrified

that Minhoi and Nanhoi might run away when they hear me coming,
and I tiptoe to the room indicated by the desk clerk.
My heart overflows when I hear Nanhoi squealing and splashing
in the bathroom. He pulls me fully dressed into the bathtub and hugs
me, and Minhoi hugs me too and kisses me. And all pains become
sweet as if I’d been put under.
The night with Minhoi and Nanhoi is filled with peace and bliss.
The very next morning, we fly to Miami, planning to visit the Ba­
hamas, where I want to buy an island.
In Nassau we hop a one-engine seaplane for the Exuma group and
check out the island. It has a small jungle, a snow-white beach that ex­
tends far into the ocean at the ebb tide, and a cliff on which sea eagles
nest. There is also a bewitching underwater garden. From a rowboat
your naked eye can see a hundred yards under the surface and you
can watch the strange, iridescent fish and the magical structures of ra­
diant coral.
I buy the island, and that same day we fly back to Nassau, where
we’ve rented a house.
But we’ve fooled ourselves. Or rather, we so deeply needed the
caressing hand of peace that we were actually able to live together for
an instant. Then suddenly, as if starting from a profound dream, we
realize that it will never be possible again. The tension becomes so
unendurable that we can’t even go out to a restaurant and eat at the
same table. We leave.

In Paris I give up the torture chamber on Avenue Foch. While hunt­

ing for an apartment, I stay at L’Hotel, where Oscar Wilde once
resided. It’s across from the Route Mandarine, the first Vietnamese
restaurant Minhoi ever took me to. L’Hotel was also the first Paris
284 K laus K inski

hotel that I stayed at with Minhoi*. Now it’s a nightmare. But I’m at a
loss where else to go.
I’m starved for pussy, so like a satyr I drag any cunt to bed with
me and fuck and fuck and fuck. Salesgirls. Waitresses. Chamber­
maids. Married women. Mothers. Black women from Haiti, Mozam­
bique, Jamaica. Frenchwomen. American tourists. Students from
Russia, China, Japan, Sweden, Chile, India, Cuba. A Bedouin.
Schoolgirls from Africa. The naked black women from the Paradis
Latin. The sweet asses from the Crazy Horse. The seven black mod­
els from Yves Saint-Laurent, all seven of whom devour me with the
fleshy sponges of their wet, heavy lips. The wife of the gas station
owner. The girl from the reception desk. The toilet cleaner at the
Route Mandarine. The wife and mother with the big scar on her face.
And all the girls in the cafés who smile at me as I pass or whom I run
into on the way to the toilet.
The chambermaids at the hotel can’t come to my room at night.
Besides, some of them are married and at night they have to get fucked
by their husbands. I fuck them when they come to clean up my room,
or I call them with some flimsy excuse when they’re making the beds
next door or vacuuming the stairs. I fuck them on the bed, on the
floor, on the toilet, on the bidet, on their backs, on my knees, on their
bellies, standing, bending, squatting. . . . We mustn’t take too long,
otherwise they’d be missed. If necessary, they keep the vacuum on.
Some of them show up a bit later for the next fuck.

I still haven’t recovered from Woyzeck. Sometimes I stuff my fist into

my mouth to avoid shrieking. Or I bore my fists into my ears or my
eyes, or I strike my head to shake off the malevolent creatures of my
visions. They lurk everywhere, digging their claws into me. I wonder
how long I can stand this.
 Kinski Uncut 285

I’ve found an apartment on Quai de Bourbon on the lie Saint-

Louis, almost on the other side of the block where Minhoi’ and Nan-
hoi* live. Now I only have to go around two corners and I’m with my
babyboy. Sometimes Minhoi brings him to me and visits awhile. But
not often, and even when she stays it’s not for long because we always
start fighting.
I don’t want to own anything. I’ve got almost no clothes, because
every few months I check through them, dumping out anything I
don’t need. I don’t have any books except for a couple of Jack Lon­
don novels and accounts of solo sailing trips around the globe. I burn
scripts, letters, pictures, just as I do with every book after reading it.
During such a raid on useless ballast, I stumble upon my handwritten
manuscript about Paganini, The DeviVs Violinist. I’m about to burn it,
because so much of my past is involved, but something keeps me from
tossing it into the fire.

Nastassja visits us whenever she can, even for a few minutes. She’s
crazy about Nanhoi* and constantly hugs and kisses him, rolling on the
floor with him and shrieking for joy.
Today, as we drive to the Banque Rothschild , where Nastassja
has opened an account, she bursts into tears, and I can’t calm her
down. She clings to me for help as if afraid of being swept away by a
raging torrent and losing me forever once she lets go. Her entire body
is so profoundly shaken by shocklike convulsions that she can’t
breathe, and her words come like shrieks torn from her choking throat.
“You . . . don’t . . . love . . . m-me. . . .”
I’m dumbstruck, I can’t speak. That makes me even more
suspect, and she’s about to shove open the car door and jum p out.
I forcibly hold her back and hug her very tight and kiss her for a
long time.
286 K laus K inski

Now it dawns on me! We’ve been separated since she was seven—
that is, during all these years, we’ve met only sporadically and for brief
periods. But her love and yearning have been growing and growing.
The truth is that I wasn’t with her when she needed me. Now she sees
how I love Nanhoi* and she believes that I can’t love her as much as I
love my son. That I’ve never loved her like this. I try to make her real­
ize that she’s distorting everything in her pain and not seeing the
truth. That I’ve painfully missed her since our separation and that I’ve
never stopped loving her. But even though she gradually calms down,
I have a feeling she doesn’t believe me.
I tell her about Paganini and that I absolutely have to have her for
my movie. She is to play the young woman Paganini longs for with
such wild passion. Nastassja is happy.

The German government writes me that it has awarded me the

supreme distinction for an actor: the Gold Film Ribbon. What gall!
Who gave those shitheads the right to award me anything? Did it
never occur to them that there might be somebody who doesn’t want
their shit? What filthy arrogance to award me—me, of all people!—a
prize! What does this prize mean, anyway? Is it a reward? For what?
For my pains, sufferings, despair, tears? A prize for every hell, every
dying, every resurrection? Prizes for death and life? Prizes for pas­
sion, for hate and love? And how did you shitheads intend to hand me
the prize? As a gift? As a favor, like those tasteless hosts that the pope
distributes like fast food? I’ll kick you! Or do I come submissive,
whimpering? I’ll kick you again! And there’s not even a check. It’s
outrageous!
Then they send me the piece of shit in Paris. Nanhoi doesn’t even
want this disgusting trinket to play with. He kicks it away. So I toss
the Gold Ribbon in the garbage can.
 Kinski Uncut 2 8 7

The premiere of Nosferatu takes place at the Paris Cinémathèque.

When Nosferatu first appears on screen—shorn bald, chalky white,
with fangs, a reptile with long claws like spider legs—Nanhoi’s
little, joyfully quivering voice calls through the dark silence:
“Papa!”

Then the carnival of the Cannes Film Festival begins. I’ve never be­
fore known what it really is. Now everyone blabs away at me, saying I
have to go to Cannes because of Woyzeck.
Minhoi has dashed off to India with Nanhoi. Today the first pic­
ture postcard arrives. Pm gonna hop a plane—today if possible—and
look for them in India. But I can’t decipher the name of the village in
the postmark. I buy a magnifying glass, but the print is so blurred and
broken that I can barely piece a name together. I buy a huge map of
India, and with the magnifying glass I scour the whole country, hunt­
ing for a place that sounds like that name. But there are too many.
How can I track Minhoi and Nanhoi down among a billion people in
that huge land? I feel helpless and ridiculous. Why is Minhoi doing
this? She must know that I can’t live without my son! Why does she
make things worse all the time? Why?
And while I keep asking myself the same senseless questions day
after day, trying to decipher the name of the Indian village on the post­
card, my flight to Cannes keeps drawing closer and closer. I’m deter­
mined to forget about the festival if Minhoi and Nanhoi' don’t return in
time to come with me.
One day before the start of the festival, Minhoi and Nanhoi return
from India, and she doesn’t even bother to unpack. Together with a
nanny, we fly to Cannes. Minhoi can lie on the beach and recover
288 Klaus Kinski

from her strenuous trip across India while Nanhoi splashes in the
swimming pool at the Hotel Majestic. He stays there all day long. I
drudge like a horse, prattling and prattling for TV, radio, newspa­
pers. . . . And always the same old questions: How? And why? And
what’s the next project? And all the other dumb, sterile crap. I refuse
to believe that the public cares one way or another. On the contrary:
People hate being bamboozled by these programmed reporter robots!
And then the hysteria over these crummy prizes! And it’s only a
gang of twelve lousy jurors who actually imagine they’re sitting in
judgment (their supreme wish!). If they had their druthers, they’d be
weighing the life and death of a human being. There’s so much gossip
about my getting (yet another) prize. It’s like the cattle market, where
the bulls get prizes for their dicks and the cows for their udders. After
yet another TV interview, I’m just heading off to take a piss when I
jump back into the media room and shout into the mike that no one
should dare try to mock me by giving me such a prize.
Menahem Golan, whom we know from Israel because of Entebbe,
sits down at my table and asks if I want to star in his first Hollywood
flick. I ask him if he’s got a checkbook handy. He shows me his check­
book, which is wedged under his shirt because it’s hot out and he’s
not wearing a jacket. That is, he holds the checkbook halfway out at
the level of his fat gut. This reminds me of the Moroccan who kept
pointing to the cigarette pack in his hand, to his fly, and to the bushes,
wanting to fuck me up the ass in that public park, in broad daylight.
Instead of cigarettes, Menahem tears a scrap from a newspaper and
scribbles on the blank margins with his ballpoint: the sum, the date,
and the title of the movie. Meanwhile he again pulls the checkbook
halfway out of his sweaty shirt at the level of his fat belly and points al­
ternately to the shred of newsprint and to his half-visible check pad.
“Can’t you wait until tomorrow?” I ask him. “Then we can type
up the most important stipulations.”
 Kinski Uncut 289

“Tomorrow you’re getting the Cannes prize. Then you’ll be twice

as expensive.”
“Tomorrow I’ll be twice as expensive even without this stupid
prize,” I say.
That’s how all of them are—these cattle dealers. As if a person
were different just because he’s been awarded a “prize”!
I put off the dealing until tomorrow so that he won’t take advan­
tage of me. And yet I’m tempted to take a check for half the salary, or
at least a third, right now, right here at the table, without doing a thing
for it. A pile of money right in my hand after signing a scrap of
newsprint for a movie that I’m supposed to start in six months and
that may never be shot.
The street kid in me says, “Grab the money and run—who cares
who it’s from! Don’t think about whatever you have to do for it or
when you have to do it!”

After Cannes I go to Hollywood to make the mindless flick for Golan.

I’ve gotten my entire salary in advance, and so I have to swallow the
repulsive pill—like it or not. There’s also some other American crap,
with Ornella Muti as my wife, and directed by James Toback. But at
least Jimmy gets me girls.
I’ve also promised Twentieth Century Fox to go on a PR tour for
Nosferatu in the United States and Canada and to participate in the
New York Film Festival. After hustling for Nosferatu in seven Euro­
pean countries, I now have to keep my promise. Minhoi, Nanhoi,
and I spend four weeks traveling the length and breadth of the
United States and Canada. Four hundred and eighty newspaper in­
terviews, God knows how many TV shows, and more than six thou­
sand radio stations! Every day from seven A.M. until midnight,
nothing but bullshit.
290 Klaus K inski

It’s important for me to have Nanho'i close by. And even though I
now mostly see him asleep or at breakfast, I can at least look at him
and touch him and kiss him and hug him tight.
Not only is the interview whoring a horrible grind, but I never get
a chance to choke down a bite of food. Even when I’m having lunch
with up to thirty journalists, I have to keep answering their sterile, su­
perfluous questions while they themselves slurp down their soup, not
missing the opportunity to stuff their guts. At least they listen—which
is quite extraordinary for so-called journalists. They’re thrilled by my
openness and they write down whatever I say.

At the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where I’m staying, the first girl I get
into bed is Hawaiian. She has a broad, dancing ass like a hula per­
former’s, and a dark twat with thick lips.
Sabbath is one of the managers of the Beverly Wilshire, a black­
haired Mediterranean devil. All it takes is a single glance of her huge
black eyes to open your fly. Whenever I complain to her, she insists
on personally showing me another room, even though she knows it’s
not another room that I want. I pull off her panties and put her belly
down on the bed, no matter how much her beeper may be beeping.
The more I fuck her, the more she wants me to fuck her. Day and
night I’ve got so many complaints about something in the Beverly
Wilshire Hotel that Sabbath and I could do nothing but fuck. Except
that Marlayna, my driver, gropes my crotch during the drive to the
shooting site. Marlayna isn’t as big as the giant hooker in Pakistan, but
she’s still so big and powerful that she makes all the other studio
chauffeurs look like dwarves, and they are very respectful of her.
Unlike the Pakistani giant, who, in proportion to her body, had
huge, fleshy pussy lips, Marlayna has a tiny, chubby piggy-cunt that
vacuum-pumps my cock head like a pouting mouth.
 Kinski Uncut 29 1

Sometimes I crash in Sabbath’s pad. Then we can finally fuck

long and hard, and I fuck her not only from behind, like in the hotel,
but also from in front, on her back, and on her side. Or else she rides
my dick. I eat her pussy, and she slurps my balls, my asshole, and my
cock. In short, she fucks shamelessly, like a good slut.
I fuck Marlayna only once because I always have a date with some
other chick after the shooting. Marlayna is horny, but she works a lot
of overtime, so she hardly ever gets to stuff a righteous piece of dick
into her twat.

Catherine Burkett plays my daughter in the Golan flick. When I

fuck her in my hotel room, I really think I’m fucking my daughter.
Scenes from the movie emerge in me: I see my daughter naked in the
shower and I can’t take my eyes off her, can’t stop thinking how ex­
citingly slutty she looked in “my wife’s” clothes. Now those images
blend with the present, when she’s lying on my bed, half undressed,
her skirt hiked way up. And she childishly kicks around as I pull
down her stained panties. Her piggish ass cheeks, her small belly,
her trembling thighs, her mini-cunt, seemingly unfucked and of­
fered for devirginizing (though she lives with some old guy, who
probably fucks the shit out of her), her curious asshole that keeps
closing and opening—all her apertures shriek: “I wanna be your
little wife!”

Twentieth Century Fox has made me a present of a license plate that

says NANHOI—I wanted it so badly. I buy a Jeep so that I can get the
license plate. Then I ship the Jeep to Le Havre in northern France to
show the plate to my baby boy in Paris.
I squeeze my Nanhoi so wildly and for such a long time that I
292 K laus Kinski

knock the breath out of him. Then, together with Veronica D., I take
the train to Le Havre in order to pick up the Jeep.
As she calls up her husband, who’s in Marseilles, Veronica squats
with my dick inside her from behind. He doesn’t even realize that
she’s in Le Havre instead of Paris.
Today, at the crack of dawn, Veronica and I drive back to Paris in
the Jeep. I show it to Nanhoi and then unscrew the plate, which be­
longs to me forever now. And then I sell the Jeep.
I’ve come only to hug Nanhoi* and show him the Jeep with the li­
cense plate. Then I have to fly back to Hollywood.
Herzog suddenly pops up in Lalaland and goes all over, begging
for money to shoot Fitzcarraldo. But nobody in America wants to
lend him all the cash it would take. Finally, that garbage producer
Roger Corman screws him over like a real rag dealer. He pays him—I
think—$300,000 for the American rights. That’s laughable. And
Herzog, who’s been raking in prizes since Aguirre—there’s hardly
any country where Aguirre, Nosferatu, or Woyzeck hasn’t gotten
some kind of award—now boasts about Corman, thereby risking his
reputation.
When we were shooting Nosferatu, I brought him a pair of white
slacks from Yves Saint-Laurent in Paris because I could no longer
stand seeing him in the same old fart-soaked, unwashed, shit-colored
pants. Always the same sweat-stained, unwashed, shit-colored
sweater, and always the same sticky, unwashed, shit-colored shirt. It
all looked like a prison or nuthouse uniform. Who knows what he did
with the Yves Saint-Laurent trousers? In any case, he’s still sporting
those unwashed, sweat-stained, fart-soaked rags—and he’s just as un­
washed as ever. And his teeth are as rotten as ever. And he’s just as re­
calcitrant and he still stuffs his face like the garbage can he is—without
ever picking up the check.
Golan keeps asking me about Paganini. But I don’t trust him. I’m
 Kinski Uncut 293

convinced he doesn’t know shit about what I’m saying when I tell him
about my script. The first thing he shows me at his office on Sunset
Boulevard is his Oscar nomination for Entebbe (Operation Thunder­
bolt) It reminds me yet again of the swill I had to choke down during
that drudgery in Israel. I wonder why these award perverts don’t hang
their nominations in the toilet. That way they could jerk off in front
of them, undisturbed, at any time.

Back to Paris for La Femme Enfant (“The Child-Woman”).

I don’t think there’s a nastier and more suicide-inducing region
in France than the area this director bitch has chosen for the flick.
It’s near Belgium. Brutal and insidious, and now, in November and
December, it’s gray and bleak, with a freezing slush. Fog, snow, and
icy roads.
The hotel is an imitation of a small seventeenth-century château;
construction’s going on day and night, and we’re filming during the
day. Drills, hammers, saws, tractors, yells, poisonous dust, and the
stench of whitewash—day and night. The so-called deluxe “Turkish”
baths, with their huge, round plastic tubs where you could easily
drown, function as follows: If you flush the toilet, shit and piss well up
from the bathtub drain. If you turn on the cold-water faucet, out
comes boiling water that stinks of shit. And so on. It’s a Laurel and
Hardy flick. This so-called luxury château is used by Parisian men
and their whores as a weekend brothel. I could go bananas in this
cesspool, but that’s not the only reason to commute from Paris. I drive
the 120 miles back and forth every day in case Minho’i suddenly lets
Nanhoi* spend the evening with me at my apartment.
The shooting is one long battle against the aggressive obstinacy
of the “directress” bitch and her clod of a cameraman—and the two
of them stick solidly together in their obduracy.
294 K laus K inski

Minhoi flies to friends in California, and Nanhoi and I go on our first

vacation for just the two of us.
We fly to an island in the Bahamas. We splash all week long in
emerald and turquoise water, over which the turquoise and pale-violet
sky shifts from rosy lilac to hot red every evening and morning. We
dig in the snow-white sand and build castles, we cook on an open
campfire, roast crabs and shrimps and the tastiest fish—and sleep on
the beach under millions of stars that are right within grasp. And we
cover ourselves with the galaxies that hang deep down on us. Nanhoi
asks me if the earth is round and if it really turns. He’s three and a half.

Steven Spielberg offers me a part in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Someone

brings me the script from Hollywood to Paris. But much as I’d like to
do a movie with Spielberg, the script is as moronically shitty as so
many other flicks of this ilk. At the same time, Claude Lelouch is nag­
ging me to do his film Les Uns et les Autres {Bolero). I’d be willing to
do this project, but not for the shabby pittance that this rat offers me.
Besides, the American movie Venom is still in the running—all three at
once. I pick Venom because the salary is very high, even though I hate
London, where the flick’s to be shot.
First I have to go to Tokyo. Fruits of Passion is a Japanese film set
in Japan and China. The girls, the women, the boys, the men, the di­
rector, the cameraman, and the rest of the crew are all Japanese. There
are also two Frenchwomen. I’m supposed to fuck both of them in
front of the camera. In Paris I immediately drag one of them to my pad
on the Quai Bourbon and fuck her on the floor right inside the apart­
ment entrance. The other Frenchwoman is hysterical and is still re­
sisting long after I’ve stuck my dick into her pussy and shot. She’s
 Kinski Uncut 295

married, and during the fuck she babbles about “rape . . . adultery . . .
scoundrel . . Yet her bodacious butt sticks out so hornily that she
can’t want anything but adultery.

Minhoi* and Nanho’f come along to Japan.

The Japanese flick has a lot of fucking. Real fucking. In all positions,
even in the mouth. It’s the story of a man who puts his girlfriend in a
brothel in Shanghai because it turns him on. The girl does it out of
love for the man, but her torments are horrible. The flick is set chiefly
in a whorehouse in Tokyo—or rather, fifty miles outside of Tokyo, in
Japan’s oldest and most primitive silent-film studio. There’s no air-
conditioning, the mercury hits 106 in the shade, we work twenty-four
hours a day nonstop, and all we get to eat is watery soup. The Japan­
ese never complain, for the simple reason that they like to work. We’re
practically out of oxygen, you could cut the air to pieces with a knife,
every breath you take is a struggle. And we’re all sweating buckets, the
water is literally streaming down our ass cracks and out of our pants.
We can barely open our eyes; the salty sweat running down from our
soaked hair burns our lids like fire.
I’ve had the same experiences with other movies. But this is a dif­
ferent situation. According to the script, we have to fuck—for real!
Right in front of the camera, in every possible position. During the
fucking our sex organs, especially our boners, have to be seen clearly,
plain as pikestaffs. But every dick in the place is hanging slack, even
though the producer and the director, Shuji Terayama, signed a con­
tract stipulating at least six sexual acts—meaning that I have to fuck
five girls in front of the lens. One of the Japanese girls I have to
screw—and who I bang in the hotel after the shooting is done—takes
296 K laus K inski

care of the other Mr. Softies. She pulls each guy into a dark corner of
the studio and keeps sucking his dick until it finally stands at some­
thing like attention. She has to know exactly when to stop sucking.
The cock mustn’t start spurting—until it’s in front of the camera.
The instant one of these soft dicks gets hard, the girl dashes over
to Terayama and signals that filming can begin. Now, a dick may
rigidify in the girl’s hot, greedy mouth, which has milked it for all it’s
worth. But the unbearably heavy and muggy tropical heat weighs on
your nuts like sandbags, and without the milkmaid the blood pressure
in your dick promptly heads south. Your hard-on collapses before the
camera starts rolling.
From time to time, what I do is reach into the cunt’s panties and
draw in the pungent aroma. Or I suck the briny sweat out of the long
hair in her armpits. It hits my blood like a vaccine, and my fiddle bow
is instantly restrung.
Of course, in this murderous heat I’ve got little staying power,
and the first take has to be enough.
The girl I’m supposed to place in a brothel has a delicious cheese.
During one scene, she truly has a nervous breakdown when a me­
chanical dick on a kind of fuck machine is inserted into her hole. She
throws herself on the cold, slimy sand floor of the studio and rolls and
wallows in the filth, shrieking her lungs out. No one can get near her. I
lovingly calm her down and take her to my dressing room. There I
bend her over the makeup table in front of the mirror and give her a
rough and thorough fuck from behind. Then she’s fine again.

Nastassja is in Tokyo for the premiere of Tess. I instantly ring up the

Hotel Imperial, but she furiously screams at me for not calling her in
Hollywood. I didn’t even know we were there at the same time. I’d
combed the world for her because she never tells me where she is.
 Kinski Uncut 29 7

Minhoi and Nanhoi fly from Japan directly to California, then drive to
Marin County, where the two of them live in a tiny cottage, a doll­
house, in the middle of a forest. It’s all like a fairy tale: woods and hills
and dales and meadows and ravines and flower-covered rocks and al­
batrosses and eagles and does and stags and elks and big wildcats and
pumas from far away—and the sea, where sharks swim and whales
glide past. The deer pause right in front of me and stare at me. They
know I won’t hurt them. The woods are still undamaged, as virginal
as in the days of the Indians. Here the Pacific coast is free of the ven­
omous claws of the consumer plague, thanks to an unusual man
named Gary Giacomini, the administrator of Marin County. Gary be­
comes my best friend.
I rent a small room, and Nanhoi jumps up and down on my mat­
tress like on a trampoline until he can’t anymore, and, hugging, we
lapse into a sweet sleep.
Every day some Hollywood moron calls me up trying to talk me
into doing a flick in Australia and New Zealand. I don’t want to make
a movie in Australia. Not now. Not for all the bucks in the world. I’m
exhausted and disgusted. But my chief reason is I can spend two
whole months with my Nanhoi for the first time. Just the two of us, all
alone, day and night. We’ll be able to do whatever we like, eat what we
want to, play at anything and for as long as we like.
This is because Minhoi* wants to spend those two months in
Guatemala. It’s sheer madness, because the country’s teeming with
murder. But I can’t dissuade her.
Before she leaves I have to go to L.A. to check out houses to
rent while I’m shooting in Hollywood. Most of the houses are like
tombs, stuffed with ghastly furniture like coffins. Everything is decaying.
Decayed human souls and brains. Bars everywhere, electric fences,
298 Klaus K inski

electric entranceways, TV cameras, intercoms, “No Trespassing”

signs, “Patrolled by Armed Guards” notices, cable TV, washing
machines, dishwashers, garbage disposals hooked up to sinks, fire­
places with cement wood and gas-fueled flames, gardeners, poolmen,
barbecues, leaf blowers, lawn mowers—and the house that I eventu­
ally lease even has an asshole-washer on the toilet. The house is in Bel
Air. Everything is white—the walls, the carpeting, the furniture. The
walls are made largely of glass, and you can see the distant mountains
from the bed. Otherwise nothing but trees, plants, flowers, and sky.
It’s Christmas again, and I’m alone with my little boy in the doll­
house in the middle of the forest. I’ve brought back a small fir tree
from the woods and trimmed it very colorfully. Now I’m in the tiny
kitchenette, cooking for my baby boy. I’ve just done our laundry in
the bathtub, and it’s hanging on a line above the stove, where a wood
fire is crackling. And there are two bunk beds, like in a youth hostel.
We sleep in the top bunk, which is so high that I practically have to do
chin-ups to get there after helping Nanhoi up. And the bunk is so nar­
row that we wouldn’t have any room if we didn’t squeeze together. I
lie on the outer edge so my baby boy won’t fall out, while he rolls into
the corner the sloping roof makes with the inner edge of the bunk.
Maybe I’ll always be able to tell Nanhoi that each Christmas “is the
most beautiful Christmas I’ve ever had.” But so far this is indeed
the most wonderful Christmas imaginable!

My agent gets me a young Japanese housekeeper named Niko for my

house in Bel Air. She is a fantastic cook, Japanese and Chinese, and
she washes, irons, keeps the house spotless, washes our car, does the
shopping, answers the phone, cleans the swimming pool, waters the
flowers, and waters the lawn. And she does everything quickly and
quietly, smiling all the while. Besides paying her, I have to fuck her.
 Kinski Uncut 299

Morning, noon, evening, night. Whether she’s cooking, cleaning, or

standing at the washing machine, or even hosing the car. Whenever I
pull down her panties and fuck her, that hot, naked pussy snaps for
my boner like a growling puppy that bares its teeth if you try to take
away its reward.

That piece of Hollywood shit with Billy Wilder [Buddy Buddy] is

over, thank God. No outsider can imagine the stupidity, blustering,
hysteria, authoritarianism, and paralyzing boredom of shooting a flick
for Billy Wilder. The so-called “actors” are simply trained poodles
who sit up on their hind legs and jump through hoops. I thought the
insanity would never stop. But I got a shitload of money.
“From now on you’ll do serious movies with Herzog and comical
ones with me.” That’s what Billy Wilder told me when we first met at
the La Scala restaurant. But I think the reverse is true. For a long time
now Billy Wilder’s so-called comedies have been uptight and any­
thing but funny, and your laughter freezes in the corners of your
mouth. And Herzog’s so-called serious flicks would be unintention­
ally funny if I did what he wanted me to do.
Those hack parasites track me down even here—bedbugs sucking
their fill of my blood. They all want to write about me: biographies,
filmographies, videographics, cover stories, comic strips, talk shows,
and God only knows what other garbage spewed from human brains.
After trying to cash in on me for doctoral dissertations, they now use
me for high school essays—as warnings to young girls?
Jack Lang, the French minister of culture, sends me an award—
Commander of the Order of Art and Literature—through the French
consulate in Lalaland. What’s this all about? “For what you have done
for France and the rest of the world.” Once again, there’s no check
attached! Who’s the lunatic here? Where does that guy get off
300 Klaus K inski

“awarding” me such garbage? They must all have a screw loose! I tell
my agent to send back all this bloody crap!

Months ago I told Herzog that he could go fuck himself, and I hung
up on him. So he began Fitzcarraldo without me, using someone from
New York, plus Mick Jagger as Fitzcarraldo’s best friend. Now Her­
zog fucking shows up in L.A. and begs me to star in the movie.
After some four weeks of shooting with the guy from New York,
Herzog, even with his moronic brain, must have realized that the re­
sult was all garbage and that he had to start all over again from scratch.
For the fourth time this blowhard has proved that without me he’s a
nonentity. Nevertheless he tries to rip me off in L.A. Every single
word in the contract has to be retyped—until Herzog finally throws in
the towel: At midnight he runs out of the office of the Beverly Hills
lawyer and lets me write anything I like.
Mirihoi and Nanhol are in Marin County. I fly to my baby boy to
hug and kiss him one last time before taking off for South America,
where I’ll be for such a long time.
Nanhol makes me promise to give up smoking forever. I
promise him.

The five months in the Peruvian jungle are just like the months we
spent filming Aguirre ten years ago. Once again our lives are con­
stantly put at risk because of Herzog’s total ignorance, narrowmind­
edness, arrogance, and inconsideration, which threaten to bring
about the collapse of the shooting and the financing. Once again the
crew feeds on inedible chow cooked in lard. Once again we lack the
barest necessities to keep up our strength and ward off dangerous dis­
eases. Once again we lack fruit, vegetables, and especially drinking
 Kinski Uncut 301

water. Mine is the only contract to stipulate a daily ration of lemons,

papayas, and mineral water.
And I’m the only one to avoid eating that swill Herzog supplies.
Whenever possible, I catch fish in the river or shoot wildfowl and
roast them on a wood fire.
The instant Herzog smells the roast, he sticks to me like a fly to
dung and tries to eat up my food. No matter how much I curse, insult,
and even threaten him, the moment he wants something from me, he’s
here, like malaria, like the stench billowing out from a pile of shit.
He’s the same decaying garbage heap that he was ten years ago—
only more moronic, more mindless, more murderous.
Day and night he keeps a notebook in the leather kit on his belt
and he jots down his distortions about the shooting. He’s also hired
Les Blank, a so-called documentary filmmaker, who thinks of nothing
but food. He’s supposed to shoot a flick about Herzog, but this chow
hound is so lazy that he sleeps through everything. If ever, by some
chance, he happens to be in the right place at the right time, he daw­
dles and dawdles until his camera is finally attached to its tripod—and
by then it’s too late. He never uses a hand-held camera. He’s probably
too shaky, but the main reason is no doubt the camera itself: It’s too
heavy and uncomfortable.
Once again Herzog and his cameraman go for weeks without
washing. Once again their clothes are stiff with filth. Not soil, not
mud, not clay. No. Filth! Their own filth. For hygienic reasons the
thin leather over the rubber edge of the viewfinder normally ought to
be changed daily. But it’s not changed for weeks—no, months—so it’s
covered with a kind of blackish-gray slime. And it stinks so unbear­
ably that I can’t get near the camera. Furthermore, they’re all disgust­
ingly lazy and voracious—they’re still asleep at eight or nine A.M.,

whereas the jungle day dawns at three, and its wondrous and enchant­
ing light reveals creation in all its mysterious power and purity.
302 Klaus K inski

Before my very eyes the jungle arises from the colorful morning
fog, just as a body is born from a mother’s womb. Everything is new,
young, and untouched. No human beings have ever seen this on a
movie screen.
Today the morning fog is rosy, almost violet. Using a machete I
hack a path through the plant walls until I can look across the river.
On the steeply sloping opposite bank, the 350-ton ship is hanging
from a single steel hawser—as if it were sailing straight up to the rosy
and violet clouds in the heavens. It’s four A.M. I plunge through the
jungle, return to the camp, and kick Herzog out of his sleep. When he
sees with his own eyes what I’ve been yelling into his ears, he finally
hauls ass and runs along the river. Five A.M. The fog will be shredded
in twenty minutes, and nothing is repeated in nature, nothing re­
sembles the past. There’s barely time to shoot the image I want.
That’s how it goes, day in, day out, several times a day. Over
and over again I refuse to stick to Herzog’s hair-raisingly crappy
script or take his amateurish “direction.” I have to force him to
accept every camera angle I want. I have to show that dimwit of a
cameraman where the camera belongs, and I have to get the lens and
the distance. I never “rehearse” a single scene. I say, “Roll ’em!”
and I shoot only once.

The movie is practically finished. A few more weeks, and I’ll be rid of
the vermin. The final scene, which is moved up, is shot on the boat
sailing along the Amazon. I have to smoke a gigantic cigar. I stand on
deck, right in the wind, which hurls the black billows from the smoke­
stack right into my face and lungs. It’s the smoke of rubber tires burn­
ing in the engine room—for the vessel, which is supposed to look like
a steamship, is actually driven by a diesel engine. I feel like puking my
guts out by the time the scene’s been shot with different lenses. I’m so
 Kinski Uncut 3 03

ill that I nearly blank out—then Herzog comes over and says he wants
to do another take. This creep must be totally crazy! He wants me to
go through that same hell again? What for? The take was fine, I know
it! That’ll do!
I knock Herzog to the ground with a kung fu lunge and kick him
in the face. Then I go belowdecks to avoid having to see him.
“Did you have to?” that creep asks when he comes sidling over
to me.
“We’ll see,” I say. “You can get more if you like.”
“Are you ready to continue shooting?” that worm whimpers.
“Of course, you bastard,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”

In Iquitos I receive a letter from my baby boy, the very first letter he’s
ever written.

Please watch out for snakes.

I love you
Nanhoi

I can’t help crying. I can’t help laughing. I have to cry as I laugh. I

have to laugh as I cry. Oh, my dearest darling! You’re the only person
I can’t forget in the wilderness. Your words are the sweetest.
The shooting has to be interrupted. The blowhard has refused to
listen to the Indians. The level of the river have sunk so low that the
ship is stuck in the mud bottom. We won’t come back until two and a
half months from now to complete the filming.
Herzog gives one of those pukey “going-away parties” that pro­
ducers throw after beating the crew bloody. Then they all get drunk
on cheap rotgut and stuff their bellies at the self-service buffet. I don’t
attend.
304 Klaus K inski

This afternoon, shortly before my plane is to take off, Herzog

shows up at the airport. He hugs me and thanks me. I’m gonna toss
my cookies.

I give up my Paris apartment and have my Range Rover shipped to

L.A. I hop a plane from Paris to San Francisco via New York. I want
to get back to Marin County, where I was alone with my baby boy for
the first time—for two months!—in that dollhouse in the magic forest.
I’ve found a parcel of land for sale: over forty acres of woods. All
day long buzzards circle in the sky, gliding so low over my head that I
can feel the breeze in their wings. The does hop around me or stand
in front of me, staring at me. I can even creep up to within ten feet of
the wildcats. The partridges walk when they see me. The butterflies
let me touch them. I peer right into the eyes of the mice. The weather
changes nonstop. Fog billows in from the sea, rolling six feet high
across the hills in broad daylight, as if these dense patches had an ap­
pointment in the hollows of the small valleys. The sun breaks through
the wildly racing clouds. Or else there’s an icy hailstorm. Or both at
once. Rainbows. Lulls, like in the Peruvian jungle—and storms like
ocean tempests. Here the nights are packed in profound darkness that
erupts from the black sky—and here the nocturnal dome of the sky is
flooded with shiny white stars like diamonds, all the way to the outer­
most edge of the horizon.
I buy the land. Nanhoi will be free here, as free as the birds in
the sky.
I fly to L.A. and buy a Mercedes station wagon for Minhoi and
Nanhoi and a Mercedes limousine for Nanhoi and me. In L.A. I drive
from one dog breeder to another. I want to buy a young Alsatian. All
the young dogs are adorable, but for Nanhoi I want a huge, strong dog
that’ll grow with him and protect him. I name him Stronger.
 Kinski Uncut 305

After buying the land, I go to Marin County as much as I can, often

only overnight, to supervise the construction of the house. It’s a
simple wooden house in the midst of a forest. A single great room with
a sleeping loft and a huge fireplace that can heat the entire house.
We’ve got enough fuel—trees, that is—for millions of years, and we
pump our own water from the ground. There’s also a huge vegetable
garden, which we can cultivate all year round, and we have all sorts of
fruit trees: cherry, apple, apricot, almond, and plum. I’d like to bake
our bread myself. I want to be free, independent. Free of all coercion.
Free of any need to rely on other people. I have no credit cards, nor
do I want any. I toss the cash on a table. I leave others in peace and I
want to be left in peace. I spend my nights sleeping on the ground in
the forest. I embrace trees as I have done all my life. I smell their bark
and kiss it. I lay my face on the moss and breathe in the spicy aroma of
fruitfulness as if I were lying on a woman’s belly.

It’s been six months since Minhoi and Nanhoi left on a trip around the
world. So far I’ve received only one postcard from Nanhoi in Nepal
and one telegram from Minhoi in Australia. Her wire says they’re
coming back.
Once again I arrive at the airport hours in advance, clutching the
telegram, which I reread endlessly to make sure I’m not fantasizing.
And I keep asking the information girl about the Qantas plane. Date,
time, flight number. I feel like a wolf who’s been chased into the city. I
stare at the monitors to get the data on the Qantas plane, but I’m too
agitated. I don’t understand the signs. I get dizzy. I start sweating. I
halt exactly where the passengers come streaming through an auto­
matic double door that keeps opening and closing.
306 K laus K inski

My Nanhoi is so tiny that my eyes fill up with tears when I see

him. He’s wearing a little knapsack and he takes long strides as if hik­
ing through the world.

A few days later Minhoi goes to Marin County; she wants to find a
house for herself and Nanhoi'. I’ll follow her in the Range Rover with
Nanhoi* and Stronger.
Herzog and his cohorts keep bombarding me with phone calls,
yammering and begging me to attend the Cannes Film Festival. I say,
“Fuck off!” But they’re like vermin, they keep coming back. Eventu­
ally, I think, Okay. I have to visit my dentist in Paris anyway, and they
can pay for my trip.
In Cannes, that same old garbage heap. That same riffraff. Again
press conferences, together with that totally moronic Herzog.
Tonight is the so-called gala premiere of Fitzcarraldo. I’m already
wearing a repulsive tux, which feels like a straitjacket in a nuthouse.
This is the last time. Tomorrow morning I’m gonna dump it in the
trash.
I don’t know what time it is; I don’t have a watch. But it’s already
dark, and I probably should have been called for long ago. But no one
comes to drive me to the gala premiere. Herzog and his cohorts went
there alone! Without me! Without Fitzcarraldo! That would be reason
enough to beat the shit out of them. But I don’t care. All I care about is
having Lola. I first saw her late this afternoon outside the Hotel Carl­
ton. She asked me for my autograph, and when she spoke, her rosy-
red strawberry mouth swelled as if it were her pussy with my dick
inside. I told her to come to my room.
Under the pretext of having her try on my tux, I strip off her
clothes. Even her panties. First I pull the tux trousers over her naked
ass. Then over her curiously peeping twat. Then I draw the sus­
 Kinski Uncut 307

penders over her heavy young udders, I zip the zipper over the pump­
kin of her small schoolgirl belly, and I button the black jacket over the
white flesh of this horny fruit. Then I drag her out on the balcony and
seat her on my lap, claiming that I want to watch the people way be­
low on the beach promenade, which is ablaze with spotlights. How
simple is the brain of a tomcat in heat! But when her ass touches my
painfully rigid dick, which leaps between her gaping cheeks, I have to
stuff one of her udders into my mouth to keep from shrieking in my
horniness. With her tit so deep in my throat that I’m practically chok­
ing, I carry Lola to the bed.

Once more New York. To dub Venom. Arthur Penn wants me for a
film. I turn him down. I’ve turned down Fellini and Visconti and Pa­
solini as well as Ken Russell and Liliana Cavani—usually because of
the money. And I’d have turned down Eisenstein and Kurosawa for
the same reason. By now I’ve made over 250 movies and turned down
over a thousand.

This year I have to fly around the world three more times. From now
on I won’t accept any project during Nanhoi’s vacation. Not for all the
money in the world. I will spend time with Nanhoi. I will play with
him endlessly. In the evening, before we go to bed, I tell him stories.
Stories that I’ve personally experienced. Stories from the jungle or the
desert, from the Himalayas and the ocean. Nanhoi asks me for details
over and over, even days and weeks later.
We go to the beach and fly kites that I’ve brought back from
China and Japan. They float so high that they fray and tatter in the
wind. Nanhoi tussles with a kite like a lion cub with an eagle. His face
is defiant, almost angry, and he struggles hard. Soon he manages to
308 K laus K inski

get two-string kites to rise and plunge and shoot back up from right
above the ground.
Stronger is almost a year old. We’ve built him a gigantic dog­
house right near the cottage. But he never sets foot in it, not once. He
doesn’t even go near it, as if it were an outrage and beneath his dig­
nity. He sleeps directly under our loft window, which faces the
woods, and he lets out a brief, raw bark whenever he catches any
sound. He owns the woods and the hills, which go all the way to the
Pacific Ocean, as far as the eye can see. Tens of thousands of acres of
forest with its rank and impenetrable thickets, towering tree giants,
enchanted paths, which mysteriously open and close as in a fairy tale.
Wilderness, jungle . . .
Stronger leaves in the morning and returns in the evening. He
runs and runs, ten or fifteen miles a day. And the longer he’s here, the
more his face reveals the landscapes of the time when his forebears
were wolves. He’s free. No collars, no dog tag.

I have to race around the world over and over again. Nanhoi is with
Minho'i, and no one’s with Stronger. I ask Tony, the son of an old
farmer from the Azores, who lives a mile from our house, to bring
Stronger his food when I’m gone. At first it works nicely, but Stronger
stays away for longer and longer stretches because Nanhoi* and I aren’t
waiting for him in the evening. And Stronger can’t understand why
there’s no one here when he comes home. Stronger doesn’t come back.

Back in Marin County I harvest the first plums in my life. This is the
first time I eat plums that I haven’t bought or stolen. I make pre­
serves, using honey instead of sugar. This is the most delicious jam
I’ve ever eaten. Four twelve-inch jars. The jam’s meant for the win­
 Kinski Uncut 309

ter, but in no more than two weeks my baby boy and I have emptied
all four jars.
How often, as a small boy, I pressed my face against the gates of
bakery cellars, inhaling the exciting smell of bread, as warm and
protective as a womb. I have to learn how to bake my own bread. I
have to learn it for the great trip. Lola gave me one of her mother’s
recipes. She also gave me a recipe for napfkuchen. Sometimes I bake
a good one. Sometimes it’s only an ordinary lump, but I eat it all
the same.
Our garden is so big that we could live off it. Nanhoi planted the
first seeds: sunflowers, radishes, beans, corn, and potatoes. But we
have to plant a lot more veggies, especially tomatoes. We need more
apple, pear, peach, and apricot trees. We’ve got whole jungles of
huckleberries, raspberries, mountain cranberries. Chanterelles and
other mushrooms spring up after each rain. And there are blueberries
and wild strawberries galore. We’re going to add gooseberries and
rhubarb. Then we can have rhubarb pudding and rhubarb compote
in the hot summer months. We’re going to plant all the herbs that the
Indians did.
We could live without electricity and without a phone. If only I
didn’t have to go to stores anymore. Or to restaurants. Or post offices
or gas stations.

Beauty and the Beast for ABC in Hollywood. I think of Cocteau’s

magical film. I can’t think of anything else, not even when I read the
hair-raising script, which degrades the most beautiful of all fairy tales
to banal Hollywood trash.
They promised to get Jessica Lange to costar. Instead they want
to force some New York actress on me. They do give me the right
to translate Cocteau’s words verbatim, from French into English—but
310 K laus K inski

all the other characters speak the unimaginative, proletarian, idiotic

dialogue of the American TV version. The shooting is indescribable.
I do the flick in five days. In the middle of the close-up of the
death scene, the prince who’s been transformed into a beast is saying,
“A poor animal that’s lost its love can only creep away and die.” Then
some creep yells through the loudspeakers: “Quitting time!”
It’s about six in the afternoon. The working day set by the union
is over!

My agent calls. George Roy Hill wants me for The Little Drummer
Girl Producer: Warner Bros. Shooting time: five months. Locations:
Germany, England, Greece, Israel. They’re messengering the script
over to me. Shit!
At night I grope my way through the woods, my forehead touch­
ing the starry sky, or else I sail a surging ocean, or I lie on moss in the
daytime, clouds drifting overhead and buzzards soaring in circles. At
such times I know that I’m far away and that I’ll never go back to the
vile traps of human beings and their ghettos, where madness lurks and
roams. Nanhoi’s love will redeem me from my hell on earth.

All my life I’ve stuttered whenever I try to express what’s inside me,
what I feel, what I suffer, and what makes me happy.
People call me an “actor.” What’s that?
In any case, it has nothing to do with the shit that people have
always blabbered about it. It’s neither a vocation nor a profession—
although it’s how I earn my living. But then so does the two-headed
freak at the carnival. It’s something you have to try and live with—
until you learn how to free yourself. It has nothing to do with non­
sense like “talent,” and it’s nothing to be conceited about or proud of.
 Kinski Uncut 311

Eleonora Duse, the greatest actress in Italy, said at the end of her life:
“I did everything wrong. I should have devoted myself totally to my
child. The theater has never given me the fulfillment that I had when I
was with my child.”
When I was a little boy I sometimes put on my mother’s clothes
because I had nothing else to play with. I was fascinated by my image
in the mirror: My reflection was like a multitude of pictures copied
atop one another, one of which pushed through—while my clothing
kept changing nonstop. My mother’s clothes kept changing under the
duress of my fantasies, which conjure up my previous lives. Or my fu­
ture lives. It is the incarnation that dictates the costume. Without it
clothes have no meaning. They remain anonymous, like a disguise at
Mardi Gras, when anyone can put on any costume whatsoever.
I once owned a Japanese wooden mask. One of those white,
silent, neutral masks that seem totally expressionless. I bet some
friends that as soon as I had the mask on my face I could will it to take
on any expression. That is, the mask would express whatever I felt. It
would suck up my expression and be imbued with it, become impreg­
nated by it and give birth to it anew. I put on the mask, which covered
up my face. Then I alternately smiled and wept. And the mask like­
wise smiled and wept.
The same thing happened to me as had happened when I was a
little boy putting on my mother’s clothes. But this time it was uncon­
scious. Later I triggered the rebirth more and more often and fully
consciously, in precise terms and whenever I wanted it. Today I can
no longer resist it, even if I’m on the alert day and night, even in my
sleep, even in my dreams—I’m like a wolfhound, who perks up his
ears even when he’s fast asleep. The danger that I can no longer dis­
card the incarnations that I evoke becomes greater and greater. They
spawn other incarnations, which in turn spawn others, and so on.
They’re unruly plants pushing up, no matter what, from the
312 K laus K inski

bottom of my soul, leaving nothing but devastation behind. Soul

plants, chaotically shooting upward and in all directions. They hide
out in the finest ramifications of my dreams. They poison my sleep.
Strangle me. Try to drive me insane. A ruthless struggle begins and
never seems to end.
A producer tells me the plot of a movie. At one point, I scream
and refuse to let him continue. I can’t stand the fate of my character,
whom I am already living during the producer’s description. The in­
carnation does not take place deliberately here; I can’t force it. I’m at
its mercy. Unshielded. Wide open and ready to receive—from the
very moment that I allowed the producer to start narrating the plot of
his film.
It’s especially when I’m worn out and feeble that I’m ambushed
by the demons. They come in packs, surrounding and harassing me.
No matter whether I’m dreaming or waking, in the dark of night or in
broad daylight. If I collapsed, they would pounce on me.

In Vienna I stand at a shop window where violins are displayed. In

one corner I see a twelve-inch portrait of an unusual-looking man. His
face is wild and devastated by passion. “The black tails of my
crumpled tuxedo, which I haven’t changed in thirty years . . . My
raven curls fluttering down my shoulders . . . My grotesquely con­
torted body is wooden . . . like a crazed animal. . . . My long arms
and gigantic hands seem extended by the bow in one and the violin in
the other. . . . My ugly head with the toothless, cynically twisted
mouth . . . My dreadful face engraved with indelible signs of profound
anxiety, genius, and hell . . . No wife hesitates for even an instant to
deceive her husband with me—when I place my violin under my chin
and start to play.”
I must have been standing at this window for a very long time;
 Kinski Uncut 3 13

twilight is already setting in. I step into the violin shop and ask the
proprietor who the violinist is. He says, “Paganini.” I dash from the
store. I know that I was Paganini.

“Acting schools!” I could never understand what they’re all about.

Someone told Eleonora Duse that she ought to open an acting school
in the United States—a so-called actors studio. It would be a sure hit
because so many people would apply. Duse answered: “Pm the most
unsuitable person for that role because on the very first day, I would
tell the students not to come back.”
How can anyone believe that you can “learn” how to feel and
learn how to express it? How can anyone teach another person how to
laugh and how to cry? How to be cheerful and how to be sad? Teach
them what pain is, and despair, and desire, and passion? Hate and
love? How can anyone waste their own and somebody else’s time with
that idiocy?
But far worse than the morons who think they can learn these
things are the people who claim they can teach them. In the end, they
teach bad manners. If one of their trained poodles sits down in public,
he doesn’t sit, he slouches—which is supposed to mean that his be­
havior is “natural.” He or she scratches his or her head and picks his
or her nose, which is supposed to mean that he or she has no com­
plexes and acts very spontaneously. So this is what a New York talk
show looks like.
In Paris the TV interviews are even worse. Your clothes have to
be grimy and at least arouse a suspicion of Communism. You’re un­
shaved and a bit sweaty, your hair is stringy and unkempt, and natu­
rally you’re wearing an ancient leather jacket that looks as if you’d
bought it at the flea market. You chew on your dirty fingernails,
scratch your belly and your legs, stick your fingers in your ears and up
314 Klaus K inski

your nose, and of course, whether you’re male or female, you scratch
your head.
All these things are the results of those actors studios. I experi­
ence them personally when I’m shooting in Hollywood. Everywhere
in the world you concentrate before each take (to the extent that you
understand that you have to be quiet, as silent as possible, on the set).
Or at least you shouldn’t disturb whoever’s in front of the camera. If
you’re not part of this take, you keep your mouth shut, don’t make a
sound, and don’t stir once the bell has rung. But this time, instead of
shutting up, some creeps who’ve just gotten their degrees from one of
those idiotic “acting schools” start hopping around—as if in the
throes of Saint Vitus’s dance—making puke noises, grunting like pigs,
making ridiculous faces, laughing shrilly and unnaturally, bleating
and bawling. I think I’m witnessing the crises of lunatics. I feel ha­
rassed by it all.
Many people see the apogee of acting as the ability to “slip into
someone else’s skin.”—How do you do that? Shakespeare wrote
Hamlet for a fat player in his troupe—a man he viewed as capable of
doing the part. Is every actor now going to fatten up in order to be­
come a fat Hamlet?
People always think of Hamlet as slender, Romeo as handsome,
Othello as gigantic. And then they’re surprised when they find a gor­
geous girl who lets herself be fucked by an ugly and much older man.
Or who even loves him.
Naturally, the exterior is a detail in perfecting an incarnation—but
that doesn’t tell you which exterior, and as a mere detail it’s subordi­
nate and of varying importance. Nor can you tell whether the incarna­
tion is a reincarnation, which only you believe in. It’s important to
know that everything is reincarnation and that the real point is
whether the metamorphosis is perfect. The kind, the shape, and the
color are produced by the metamorphosis itself.
 Kinski Uncut 315

Long ago, and without any difficulty, I could have been a dog or a
horse, a bird, a snake, a cat, a fish, a caterpillar, a butterfly, or even a
worm. Not through stupid grimaces. But with their organs. With their
ocular prisms. With their hearing, their sense of smell. With their sex­
uality, mating, copulation, pregnancy, bearing. I felt all this as a child,
but I couldn’t interpret it. The first time I realized it physically was
when I played the woman in Jean Cocteau’s La Voix humaine. At
night I went out in full drag: panties, bra, garters, and high heels. Not
to flaunt anything, but for my own sake. Dressing like a woman struck
me as natural, as a matter of course, because I felt like a woman once
the metamorphosis began. I was fully conscious of being a woman.
I find the totality of metamorphosis most terrifying when I’m
Woyzeck. Woyzeck, who murders his wife, the person he loves most
in the world, and who then goes insane and drowns himself, orphan­
ing their little boy.
Suffering through that had as devastating an impact on me as if I
hadn’t only always suffered as Woyzeck but continue to do so over
and over. Malaria of the soul, recurring again and again. My total be­
ing is one large breeding ground for the shocks of the world past, pre­
sent, and future. All living and dying, all vibrations pass through me.
The entire universe pours into me, rages in me, rampages through me
and over me. Annihilates me. It comes and goes whenever it likes. It
rules me, commands me, envelops me, threatens me, and waits for me
everywhere and all the time. It sucks me up, sucks me dry, grows
through me. It’s in my spinal marrow. In my brain mass. In my blood,
in my bones. My muscles. Guts. Genitals. Sperm. Flesh. Eyes. Hear­
ing. Taste. Smell. Balance. Laughter. Tears. In my days and my
nights. In my thoughts. In my feelings. In my courage and my fear. In
my despair and my hope. In my weakness and my strength. Every­
where and all the time.
I’m tom apart by the most conflicting feelings, the most conflicting
316 Klaus K inski

thoughts—often at the same time, with no concern as to whether I can

endure it.
I don’t know how this will end. All I know is NanhoT’s love. My
son is my life. I believe in the magic of his love. He is the embodiment
of life to me. The embodiment of beauty. Through him I’ll find re­
demption and salvation. Then the wound in my soul—the wound I
thought would never scar over—will stop bleeding. I thought I would
have to tear it open once it began to heal. Back then, when I didn’t
know that there is no backing out once you start becoming the incar­
nation of all existence. Back then, when I felt I couldn’t stop being
what is called an actor, when I told myself that I was only doing it for
the money and that it could be worse. Now, today, I’d rather be poor,
but without nightmares and without the torture. If only I could! If
only the choice were mine! I don’t want to be an actor! I wish I’d never
been an actor! I wish I’d never had success! I’d rather have been a
streetwalker, selling my body, than selling my tears and my laughter,
my grief and my joy.

On the flight from New York to San Francisco, the guy sitting to my
right introduces himself as “Professor So-and-So.” Who asked him?
Then he shakes my hand as if we were old buddies just because he’s
got the seat next to mine. This is not politeness, mind you! Quite the
contrary: It’s very impolite to force me to be interested in him. He
just wants to prattle and rattle, get to know me, stick his dirty nose
into my business, sniff and snoop. He’s using me. I’m supposed to
divert him, entertain him, help him kill time. Aside from his shame­
less indiscretion, he wants to have a garbage can for his refuse, which
is already piled sky-high in his brain and stinks to high heaven. And
why is he yelling? I’m not hard of hearing! The other passengers are
already gawking. Then, cunningly and out of a clear blue sky, as if
 Kinski Uncut 317

he’d read it in Dostoevsky and were trying to trap me with his sneaky
questions like Inspector Porfiri, he says, “What did you say your
profession was?” And then, “I didn’t quite catch your name.” I
didn’t give him my name. I didn’t say anything, not even “Hi!” Nor
do I plan to say anything. I can’t tell whether he even notices that
I’m not replying—that I don’t want to reply! In any case, he grinds
away, unbidden; he says he was in New York acting as an expert wit­
ness in some kind of trial—and he brazenly takes it for granted that
I’ve been gobbling up all the TV and newspaper garbage and that I’m
informed about the case. In short, he’s an authority on all questions
of pregnancy complications and he’s called upon for all kinds of liti­
gation. His son-in-law is also a professor, also a specialist, but not in
pregnancy matters. The guy is practically shouting by now. And
even though the pilots are letting the Boeing 747 engines run full
throttle, this fucking asshole of a professor is outshouting the jet
racket: “. . . womb . . . ovaries!” he hollers triumphantly, pointing
unabashedly and stupidly at the nearby stewardess, who’s flirting
with a passenger. I stand up and sit down in a window seat in an
empty row, determined not to look around until the wheels of the
plane touch down in San Francisco.
During the hollering about “wombs” and “ovaries,” I recall Viva
from Istanbul. I simply have to ring her up. Her solid, massive body
weighs on my memory as if she were lying on me full-force. She’s a
Jewish girl from Morocco whom I met in Tel Aviv when we were
shooting The Little Drummer Girl, and I fucked her up the ass. Her
husband had left Israel earlier for business reasons. But he had told
the hostess in the restaurant to keep an eye on his wife—that is, watch
her. That’s what I was told by the hostess, whom I’ve known for
years. She could see that I was horny for the Moroccan girl and that
the girl herself was in heat.
Viva came promptly to my room that night, about to shed her
318 Klaus K inski

vast, pajamalike pants right at the threshold. I could feel her oval ass
cheeks and thick-lipped pussy right through the loose silk. She
showed me that all I had to do was pull on a string to make her pants
fall. She willingly knelt down and offered me her butt as I guided her
toward the mattress with her face, tits, and belly. I just had to fuck her
from behind no matter what! No matter what! She had the widest
pelvis I’ve ever seen on a woman. Wider than on the giant whore in
Pakistan! And when her wonderful butt cheeks opened wide, her
pelvis grew even wider, so that I could barely envelop it—like the
pelvis of a full-grown cow. “It’d be better if you fucked me in the ass­
hole,” she panted. “I’ve just gotten pregnant again, even though I
wear an IUD. Besides, ass-fucking is great. . . . Please, please, fuck me
in the asshole, please!” So, I fucked her in the ass. She squealed and
grunted and rattled.

A guy comes from Munich to San Francisco in order to talk me

into doing a film. I don’t even listen to him. All I know is that
he’s also signed up a certain actress. And I have to have her!
I don’t know her and I’ve never seen any of her movies. I
don’t even realize that she’s Germany’s biggest female movie
star. All I know is that I got a boner when I saw a photo of her face
in a newspaper.
I tell the guy that I’ll do his fucking movie if I can fuck the
star. He’s to phone her. This instant. Now. She’s to hop a plane
today and come. For one night. She comes. The three of us have
dinner at the Hilton. Then we send the guy away and she comes to
my room.
She has the longest vaginal lips I’ve ever licked and stuck my
horny cock into. Then I ram into her from behind. Her face is on its
side on the mattress so that I can see her swollen mouth, which
 Kinski Uncut 319

shamelessly twists in dreadful passion. After I shoot my second load

in her, she has to fly back.

I’m supposed to make a movie based on a novel by Alberto Moravia.

So I have lunch with Rossana, my agent in Italy, and the producer, a
woman.
“Where’s Moravia?” I ask.
“Moravia didn’t want to go out,” says Rossana. He’s not feeling
well, but he’s invited us over for coffee this afternoon.
After lunch we go to his place. Moravia’s wife, Carmen, opens the
door. She laughs, opening up her mouth as if she had to suck my dick.
She kisses Rossana and the producer ogles me, leaving me no choice
but to think, “Just wait a little.” In the parlor she sits opposite us on
the sofa, crossing her legs under her ass, stretching and kicking with
outspread thighs, like a corrupt little girl who wants to show her cov­
ered pussy.
Moravia is a lucid and therefore simple man, who, impatient and
almost irritated, waves other people’s chatter away like bothersome
flies. We say what we have to and quickly come to terms. After the
coffee, we decide to drive to the production office so they can show
me photos of possible costars.
At the production office Carmen deliberately enters a side
room to lure me over. I follow her, talking loudly to avoid arous­
ing suspicion while I grab her pussy, reach sideways into her
wet panties, and massage her hole with my index and my
middle finger. This takes only a few seconds, during which I
talk even louder because she is moaning. My hand gets so wet
that I have a hard time drying it quickly on her clothes. Like it or
not, we have to pull ourselves together and wait till she can visit me
in my hotel.
320 Klaus K inski

It all sounds like the Borgias. Rossana had told me that Moravia didn’t
want to come to lunch since he was feeling under the weather.
Rossana in turn told Moravia that I, Kinski, didn’t want him to join us.
And Moravia told Carmen that he, Moravia, was invited, but that she
wasn’t. Whereupon Carmen had a fit and threatened to leave Moravia
if he tried to prevent her from meeting me.
When Moravia drives me to the hotel with the three other women,
I get out of his car and lean toward Carmen, over her right shoulder,
so that she has to turn her head to the right and Moravia can’t see me
stuffing my tongue into her mouth. Moravia evidently feels the good­
byes are taking too long, so he steps on the gas and zooms off—even
though the producer is still climbing out from behind the driver’s seat.
Her right foot is on the asphalt but her right ass cheek is still in the car.
I run alongside the car, which Moravia steers wildly through the
pedestrians, who leap aside. I keep yelling at him—he’s hard of hear­
ing—until he finally catches on and stops the car. The producer,
who’s scared to death and shaking like a leaf, dashes off to safety.
That night, Carmen shows up at the Hotel Nazionale to get
fucked. I rip her pants off from behind. I can sense whether a woman
wants to be fucked from the front or the back. I fuck Carmen from
behind.
She’d be coming for a fuck every day and every night—any time
she can get rid of Moravia. But then Cloé, Idi Amin Dada’s friend,
bends over the reception desk at the Hotel Nazionale, sticking out
her magical black butt, which orders me to fuck her before I even see
her face. I kiss her sticky lips. Her tits, her belly, her hips, her thighs,
and her ruthless ass are a trap for men, and you may see the trap but
you can’t escape it.
Cloé visits me I don’t know how often. She wants me to beg her
 Kinski Uncut 321

on the phone and say that I can’t stand it anymore, that I’m getting
blue balls—this is how she tries to make me think that fucking is not
only unimportant but downright degrading. Yet her skirt smells more
pungent the more often she visits. I know her kind. The man wants to
fuck her no matter what, and she wants to get fucked no matter what,
but she keeps teasing his cock until he ends up raping her. For her
this period of his torment and hers is a sweet intensification of her
randiness, which triggers an orgasm whenever she needs one.
Each time Cloé does visit, she stays a bit longer. She wears silk
underwear in unbelievably beautiful colors. She truly looks like the
daughter of a cannibal king. Her pussy smell, which clings to her en­
tire body, even her hair, has a magical effect on me. Even when I’m so
drained that I’m in pain from my skull down to my dick, the itching in
my cock is stronger.
In L.A. she lives with me at the Château Marmont. After a meal at
Le Dome, I kiss Morgan Fairchild and her sister outside the restau­
rant. Cloé, seething with hatred, hisses: “You leave me—a princess!—
standing in the street just to kiss that slut!”
“Why is Morgan a slut?” I ask. “Just because she’s so erotic? She
hasn’t done anything to you. Besides, you’re getting on my nerves
with your princess crap. I fuck you because you’re a super-cunt and
not because you daydream!”
I kick her out of the hotel. That evening she comes back. We fuck
all night. I rage all over her and lunge and lunge—and when she takes
a leak I even go to the toilet with her.

More and more films. We plan a flick about Céline’s final years.
Movies in Alaska, Japan, Africa. A movie high up in the Himalayas,
the Karakorum Range, where the Americans tried to storm the peak of
K2. We plan a flick in the Sahara and one at sea. Movies in South
322 Klaus K inski

Africa, Brazil, and Alaska. Who knows which movie we’re shooting?
Which movies are worth drudging for? I’m more and more scared of
making movies because they keep me away from my baby boy.

I’m very lonely. I’m not with my son.

I will tell you everything, Nanhoi, in case something should hap­
pen to me. People will say that I am dead. Don’t believe them!

(Klaus Kinski passed away on November 23, 1991, in his cabin in

Lagunitas, California. He was sixty-five. The cause of death was a
massive heart attack.)
 EPILOGUE

I came into this world in theform of a human, but the sun, the stars, the
winds, fire, deserts, forests, mountains, skies, oceans, and clouds were
trapped inside me. Do not be sad, Nanhoi. The truth is, I can never die.
For I will be in everything and seeyou in everything and watch over
you. I am your reflection in the water of a mountain lake. I am your
shadow and I am the light that creates your shadow. I am your fairy
tale. Your dream. Your wishes and desires, and I am theirfulfillment. I
am your thirst and your hunger and yourfood and your drink. . . . la m
your tenderness and the strength and hardness of your fists and feet. I
am the gentle p u ff of air that caresses your eyes. And I am the icy wind
that reddens your cheeks. I am the turning of the puma}s head when it
stares at you for a long time. I am the dandelion, whose tiny floating
parachutes delight you so. I am the falling star that blazes and fades. I
am the sweetflesh of the mango, which your teeth bite into. And the berry
whose juice you suck. la m the leaves on which you step, and the moss on
which you press your lips. I am the cobweb in the morning dew—the web
that, spun across the path, clings to you and embraces you. I am the
clouds that drift through your eyes. la m thefire that warms you, and the
coolness that refreshes you. I am the snowflakes that kiss you with tiny
mouths. And the heavy raindrops that coveryou with their swollen lips. I
am your instinct. Your touch. Your smell. Your taste. Your hearing.
Your voice. Your will and your deed.
We can never be separated. For we have become one: light, air, fire,
water, sky, wind.
 INDEX

Agnes K., 60-61 Femme Enfant, La, 293

Aguirre: The Wrath of God, 213-25, 242-43, First Legion, The, 131
292, 300 Fischer, O. W., 122, 132
Alexander the Great, 106-8 Fistful of Dollars, A, 174
Amesmaier, Rudolf, 105, 109, 123-25, 134 Fitzcarraldo, 292,300-304,306
Anuschka, 129-34, 144, 146-47 Flavio, 155-57, 161
Aslan, Raoul, 132-33 For a Few Dollars More, 174
French Commander of the Order of Art and
Bärbel, 146-47 Literature, 299-300
Barlog, 57-60 Fruits of Passion, 294-96
Bavaria Film Studios, 80-81,87, 122
Beauty and the Beast, 309-10 Gaza, Gustl von, 62-63, 213
Benito, Beatrice, 163-75, 186 Gaza, Helmut von, 87, 213
Berger, Senta, 179, 184 Geladi, Rinaldo, 192-93
Berlin Deutsches Theater, 71-75 German Gold Film Ribbon, 286
Berlin International Theater Festival, 109-10 Giacomini, Gary, 297
Berlin Kongresshalle, 128-29 Gino, 192,194-95,199
Bösenberg, Milena, 87-94, 98-100 Golan, Menahem, 255-57, 288-89, 291-93
Bouvard, Philippe, 253-54 Gsovsky, Tatjana, 109-11
Brando, Marlon, 191,226
Hamlet (Shakespeare), 56, 130, 143, 151-52,
Camille, 255-56 238,314
Cannes Film Festival, 287-89,306 Hanussen, 122, 124
Cavani, Liliana, 244, 307 Hebbel Theater, 67-69
Charley’s Aunt, 52-55 Helga, 75-76
Claude, Madame, 112-13, 115-16 Heretic of Soana, The (Hauptmann), 129,
Claudette, 254-55 131
Claudia, 144-50 Herzog, Werner, 212-16, 218, 220-24,
Cloé, 320-21 242-43, 278,280-81, 292, 299-304,
Cocteau, Jean, 65-66, 84-85, 87, 92, 119, 306
309-10,315 Hexi, 85-86
Costa, Mario, 210,212 Hill, George Roy, 310
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), 79,
83-84, 88 Idiot, The (Dostoevsky), 109-10, 141,280
Ilse A., 80-82, 87
Danon, Raymond, 255-56 I’m Just So Crazy for Your Strawberry Lips,
Denial, 253-56 152
Devil’s Violinist, The, 285-86 Important c’est d’aimer, L ’, 236-38, 243
Doctor Zhivago, 174-75 Ivan the Terrible, 83
Duse, Eleonora, 311,313
Jasmin, 110-16, 176, 260
Edith E., 66-67
Elli S., 80-82, 87 Kainz, Josef, 132-33
Elsa, 79-82, 87 Kean, 238-39
Entebbe (Operation Thunderbolt), 255-57, 288, Kinder, Mütter und ein General, 124
293 King Is Dying The, 131
Erika, 166, 237 King Ottokar (Grillparzer), 130
Kinski (father), 4-9, 14, 17, 19-22, 25, 28-29,
F W (Goethe), 130, 151 37-38, 40, 56
Fehling, Jürgen, 67-69, 79 Kinski (mother), 5, 7,10-11, 14-17, 19-29,
Fellini, Federico, 166-67, 172, 244, 307 37-38,40, 42,51-52, 55-56, 176,311
 I n d e x 3 2 5

Kinski, Achim (brother), 14, 20-22, 25, 27,
38-40,56, 77-78,85
Kinski, Arne (brother), 14, 20-22, 25, 27,
37- 40,51-52,55-56, 85,87,100
Kinski, Biggi (second wife), 137-44, 146-48,
150,152,155,165-74,176-79,187-89,
191,193-95,197-98,211,213
Kinski, Gislinde (first wife), 79, 83, 85-86,
103,108-9,170,176
Kinski, Inge (sister), 14, 16, 20-22, 25, 27-29,
38- 40,56,69
Kinski, Minho'i (third wife), 3, 202-12, 217,
219,222-23,225-36,239-41, 244-51,
256-57, 260,263-80, 282-85,287-89,
293-95, 297,300,304-6,308,310
Kinski, Nanho'i (son), 227-28, 230,235-36,
239-40,242, 244-52,256-57,260,
264-80,282-83, 285-95, 297-98,300,
303-9,316,322
Kinski, Nastassja (daughter), 110-11, 141-42,
144,146-47, 150,152,155,166-69,
172-74,176-79,187,189-91,195,
197-98, 211, 213, 244,282, 285-86,
296
Kinski, Pola (daughter), 83, 85-86, 103,108,
116,150,166,174-76,178,199
Kortner, Fritz, 102, 129, 133-34
Kropotkin, Prince Sasha, 61-64, 69, 75, 82,
84-85,213
LanghofT, Wolfgang, 71-72, 74
Lean, David, 174-76
Lee, Margareth, 179,184,189-90, 199-200
Lelouch, Claude, 244, 272, 294
Leone, Sergio, 174
Little Drummer Girl, The, 310,317
Lola, 306-7,309
Othello (Shakespeare), 67, 151, 238
Paganini, 292-93
Paganini, Niccolò, 285-86, 313
Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 199, 244,307
“Perfect Crime, The” (Kinski), 88
Poreile, 199
Richard III (Shakespeare), 151, 238
Rimbaud, Arthur, 128-29,131
Rohm, Maria, 184, 189-90
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 60, 65,151,
238
Rossana, 319-20
Rote Rausch, Der, 144, 149
Rott, 132-33
Russell, Ken, 244, 307
Sabbath, 290-91
Sabine, 237-38, 256
Saint Joan (Shaw), 150
Sarajevo, 129
Schanda, Maria, 69
Schneider, Maria, 226, 255-56
Shakespeare, William, 56, 60, 65, 67, 72-74,
84,130,143, 151-52,238,314
Taming of the Shrew, The (Shakespeare), 57-58
Tasso (Goethe), 132-33, 151
Terayama, Shuji, 295-96
Toback, James, 289
Tonya, 163-65
Twentieth Century Fox, 279, 289, 291
Ulrike K., 60-61
Uns et les Autres (Bolero), Les, 294
Ursula H., 125-26

Maccabee girl, 104-5 Vassarotti, Countess, 193-94

Machine à Ecrire, La (Cocteau), 65-66 Venice Festival, 110-11
Madame Claude, 253, 256-57 Venom, 294, 307
Marlayna, 290-91 Vera, 89-92, 94
Mattes, Eva, 281 Villon, François, 82, 108, 128, 131, 152
Measurefor Measure (Shakespeare), 72-74 Visconti, Luchino, 192, 228, 244,307
Miller, Sherene, 191-92 Viva, 317-18
Moratti, Susanne, 192-93, 195-201 Voix humaine, La (Cocteau), 84-85,87,92,315
Moravia, Alberto, 319-20
Moravia, Carmen, 319-20 Wanda, 86-87
Munich International Theater Festival, 150 Wilder, Billy, 299
Muti, Ornella, 289 William Tell (Schiller), 52
Woyzeck, 278, 280-81, 284, 287, 292,315
New York Film Festival, 289
Niko, 298-99 Yorka, 128-29, 134-36
Nosferatu, 278-80, 287, 289, 292
N uitd’Or, 238,240-41 Zulawski, Andrzej, 236-38, 243
 -

“‘I once asked a Gypsy girl­

friend whether she ever
went to the theater or the
movies, and she replied:
‘When I was fourteen, two
men fought with knives
over me. One stabbed the
other to death. I touched
the dead man; he was
really dead. The other was
really alive.’ That’s the
difference between make-
believe life and real life.
Mine is real.”
—Klaus Kinski
(lou